


A Magician and a Gentle Man

by xahra99



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Backstory, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Healing, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-23
Updated: 2012-08-23
Packaged: 2017-11-12 17:51:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 29,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/494024
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xahra99/pseuds/xahra99
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A 20,000+ word DA fic written for the 2012 annual scifibigbang ficathon. Pre-Awakening Anders backstory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to write pre-Awakening Anders as I much preferred the Awakening version of Anders: as my beta said, DA2 makes a big point of giving all your allies a obsession/character flaw or murky past . Anders is this turned up to 12.

A Magician and a Gentle Man, by xahra99.

An Anders-centric Dragon Age fan fiction written for the annual 20,000-word-plus scifibigbang ficathon.

 

" _Can a magician kill a man by magic? Lord Wellington asked Strange._

_Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. "I suppose a magician might," he admitted, "but a gentleman never would."_

-Susannah Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

 

Chapter One:

Anders stepped back and surveyed his work with pride. 

The booth's tiny interior looked both tawdry and cheap. Gauzy scarves hung from the ceiling and the freshly whitewashed walls were freckled with large blue stars. An amethyst geode was displayed prominently on a table next to a deck of creased pasteboard tarot cards, a stack of tortoise-shells and a crystal ball the size of an apple. The air smelt faintly of patchouli. A freshly painted sign above the yellow curtain advertised a name that was neither Anders nor the name that Anders had been born with.

He caught sight of his appearance in the shop's tiny window and studied the reflection carefully, examining his likeness for flaws. Cheap crystal beads glittered in his ears and around his neck, spilling over the shoulders of a frankly ridiculous coat with a fur collar. Clear-lensed spectacles with brass frames completed the ensemble. Anders was working on a beard, but that would take time. He looked false as a copper sovereign.

Anders nodded in satisfaction and decided that if he hadn't been cursed with magic, he'd have made a half-decent hedge wizard.

He hadn't planned to stay in town at all. It had just worked out that way.

Easthill was a small market town in the Ferelden hinterlands; indistinguishable to anybody but a local from several others in the area. The town had five inns and only one chantry. The chantry held a single cleric with poor eyesight and a tolerant temperament. It was as close to perfection as Anders had ever hoped to find.

 On his second day in town he had begun to tell fortunes in the inns in return for food and drinks.  By sunset he had told a fortune that had been so uncannily accurate it had surprised even Anders, who had taken his cues from his client's tense and immaculately powdered face. She had suggested moving to the marketplace. Anders had followed her advice.

 That had been three months ago.

Anders had been in Easthill ever since. It was the longest he had stayed anywhere except Calenhad since he'd been twelve, and he was beginning to hope against all evidence that the Templars would overlook him. True, they still had his phylactery, but even the Templars had to prioritise their mages. Anders, barely out of his teens and notorious only for his facility with escape plans, was nobody's idea of a threat.

First Enchanter Irving had never seen Anders as anything more than an amusing inconvenience, but the Templars were a different tale.  They'd find him eventually. They always did. After all, they had his phylactery. But right now, he was free. It was unfortunate that freedom meant freedom to starve as much as it meant freedom to spend his days how he chose, but there were far worse ways to spend time than fabricating pretty lies for pay.

Anders made a few last adjustments and ran a critical eye around the tiny cubicle. Everything was in place. His stomach growled, reminding him forcibly that there were errands to be run before the day's business began. He drew the curtain at the front of his small shop, collected his pail from its hiding place beneath the table and headed to the market.

The sky overhead was as blue as cornflowers and faded like worn linen round the edges. The streets were already beginning to fill. It was market day, which meant good business. Anders smiled and jingled a handful of copper coins in his pocket as he walked along.

A few of the townsfolk hailed him with shouts or friendly nods. Anders nodded back, keeping a sharp ear open for any snatches of gossip that might be of use later. He waved at the town midwife as she walked by with her bag of medicinal herbs. He'd always found other healers to be likely allies, should the need arise. 

  1. The air was thick with strange scents and filled with conversation. The people of Easthill gossiped freely. They didn't have to look over their shoulders for Templars, and they talked about all sorts of things that weren't mentioned in the Tower. 



"Nice sunrise this morning," Anders heard a woman say to her companion. "The weather's beautiful today."

That was another thing. Nobody in the Tower talked about the weather. There _was_ no weather. No wind. No rain. No shops. No trade.

_No music_ , Anders thought as a flute player began to play an inexpert tune, _no poetry, and certainly none of those unnaturally-coloured little drinks with umbrellas that they serve at the Three Kings_.

 He winced as the flutist hit a flat note, and wondered if the Tower's lack of musicians was a blessing in disguise. Anders had always been far too wary to try any number of things on his previous excursions from the Tower, including alcohol, drugs or close relationships, but his ambition was to try everything some day, no matter how illegal or depraved.

_Especially_ those things that were illegal or depraved. The more so, the better, as far as Anders was concerned.

There were many choices in the real world that simply weren't available to a mage. Choice was frowned upon in the Circle, because mages always somehow chose to be slavering Abominations. Anders had no idea why. There were so many other options.

He looked around the market at the array of goods for sale, and guessed that the selection would be much wider in Thedas or Kirkwall. He didn't care. There was so much, so many choices, that he thought he might possibly burst if faced with any more options. He chose a stall at random, and pointed to a pile of wizened apples.

"Three, please."

The apple-seller smiled at Anders as she passed him the fruit. "They're good today."

"I'm sure they are," agreed Anders. He gave the apple-seller a wide grin. The seller, a short woman with the dark hair and curvaceous figure of a native Ferelden, smiled back, barriers crumbling beneath his relentless cheerfulness. 

"We don't get many of your type around here," she said, handing him another apple free of charge and causing his blood to freeze briefly before she added "It's a long way from the Anderfels, after all."

Anders let out a breath he hadn't realised that he'd been holding. "You've been?"

She shook her head. "No. Though I've heard it's a cold and lonely place. What brings you here?"

Anders shrugged. "Business," he said casually. He was relieved when she nodded and the interest faded from her eyes.

"Well," she said, "have a good day."

Anders waved. "And you."

He left the stall quickly, thanking the Maker that most Fereldens did not travel and had never seen a mage in person. It was simple to blame any erratic behaviour on the strange customs of a different province where people were odd and looked different. Most people looked the other way as long as Anders didn't actually wear Circle robes and walk around carrying a staff.

He finished the rest of his shopping, filled his bucket at the well and headed back to his stall, crunching on the apple as he walked. When he had stowed his groceries away in the little space available he sat down at the table and began to deal the cards, legs sprawled out nearly to the wide open door.

To his surprise the cards held no ominous threats of Templar incarceration or demonic possession.

Anders shuffled through the deck, reciting the meaning of each card in his mind for practice. He might act the charlatan, but he had at least some pride. If he was going to fake it, then he'd be the best fake that he could. He picked one card from the pack to examine the picture, recognising the ageing features of King Maric Theirin in the Emperor's face. The Empress bore a similar resemblance to grey-haired old Queen Rowan.

"Dear lady," he intoned under his breath. "I see a handsome man in your future, one who will bring you great joy. Your husband, perhaps?" He paused, waiting for his imaginary customer's response. "You are not married? Then the cards are certain that you shall soon be wed-"

He turned over another card, winced, and shuffled past the Tower with the ease of long practice. Images flickered beneath his fingers as he turned the simple shuffle into a flamboyant display of sleight of hand.  The high priestess was a robed Divine, the Magician a staff-holding Circle mage.  Justice was depicted as a spirit of the Fade, wearing pale armour that reminded Anders far too much of Templar mail for comfort.

He shivered and shuffled the cards back into their pack. Each pasteboard square fell neatly into place face-down. The ornately patterned designs on the backs of the cards completely obscured the tiny ink marks that Anders had placed there for easy identification.

He swept a tendril of hair from his eyes and looked up as a client arrived, assessing the woman instantly. Attractive; but not too beautiful, rich; but not close to really wealthy.  She had a scar on the third finger of her left hand where a wedding ring had been recently removed, and a sad look in her eyes that put Anders in mind of the mages who had just been made Tranquil, as if she had only recently began to understand what she had lost.

She smiled at Anders, a polite little curve that erased the sadness from her eyes for a handful of seconds. "Good morning," she said, calling Anders by his _other_ fake name, the one that wasn't Anders. "I've heard that you tell fortunes."

Anders forced a smile in return. "Sounds like you've come to the right place," he said, standing to pull out a seat for her opposite to his own. He made sure that she was settled, observed the usual pleasantries, and waited until she twisted her handkerchief nervously and said "Some-some things have happened. It would help me to know what to do."

Anders pounced. "Then let me tell you why you're here. You're recently widowed." His eyes flicked to her figure beneath the tight woollen gown, recalling snatches of tavern gossip as he did so. "You've had one-no, two," he added hastily as she began to frown, "children. Your husband's death's left you without support and you've had to break up your household. Now your parents are prepared to take you in. It's a generous gift, but your husband's family have offered to make you a partner in your father's business. You're worried about the future of your children and you're not sure how to proceed. Am I right?" 

Her mouth fell open in surprise. "That's amazing."

"It's my business," Anders told her. "Now how shall we proceed? I have cards, crystals or an array of other methods. Which would you prefer?"

 


	2. Chapter Two

Chapter Two:

He found the cat a week later.

It was a cool, grey, rainy day, a bad time for business. Raindrops splashed into puddles. Anders covered his head with his cloak as he walked back from the marketplace. It was a new route, one he had not taken before and one which allowed him to shelter as much as possible under shop awnings. Anders liked to take a different path home every time, even if it meant walking further. Being aware of all potential escape routes at all times was just another one of his precautions.

He was nearly back to his stall when he heard a faint miaow.

Anders paused to look around. Rain dripped from the hood of his cloak. He liked cats, considering them kindred spirits. They'd had cats in the Tower, because even the Templars couldn't prevent cats from going wherever they wanted. It was a mystery to Anders why cats _wanted_ to be inside the Tower, where the mice were fiercer than any other rodents in Ferelden, but he had always been grateful that they were.

There was no sign of any cat. Anders looked around, scanning every potential window-sill and rooftop for a feline form. He saw nothing. He was just about to continue on when he heard the miaow again. It was very faint, and it seemed to be drifting from the floor. 

Anders knelt down to squint beneath an abandoned vegetable-barrow. "Puss?"

There was no reply. Anders' glasses fell off and landed in the mud. He picked them up hastily, folding the frames and tucking them into the pocket of his ridiculous coat."Puss?"

A weak snarl answered him. Anders stood up and gently pushed the cart away. A small tabby cat lay in the dirt, limp as the remains of last week's vegetables that surrounded her. She didn't even have the strength to flee. Pupils dilated into black holes, she snarled again as Anders knelt down and petted her head, ruffling damp fur through his long ring-studded fingers. Her tail hung limp, legs trailing. Anders touched one pink-padded paw and was rewarded with a flurry of feline expletives.

She could still feel, then. It was a good sign. There were some injuries that even healing magic could not repair.

Anders didn't even consider the consequences as he reached out for the Veil. He felt healing magic gather in his palms as he focused his thoughts. The cat hissed again. Her fur trembled with static. She shuddered and went limp as a current of mana flowed from the Veil into Anders and coursed through his hands into the cat's small broken body. He spent a few minutes carefully mapping her injuries until he could picture the shattered bones as clearly as the pasteboard images on his cards.

The damage was worse than Anders had expected. He stroked the cat's bloodstained fur gently, salving bruised muscles and knitting broken bones together. It was an exhausting process. He had never worked healing magic on anything so badly damaged. The cat was nearly dead, her tiny spirit seconds from fleeing to the Fade. Anders had expected that healing an animal would be much easier than healing a human, but he'd been wrong about that too. The cat's muscles didn't fit into the places he was used to. The body shape was all wrong, flattened on a vertical axis rather than horizontal. And then there was the tail, and he really had no clue at all how that worked.

He tried anyway.

As the Veil receded he became aware of a heavy weight balanced in the centre of his chest. He swiped hair from his face and stared into wide green eyes.

"Hello," he said.

The cat purred. Anders reached up to tickle her chin. She tilted her head back to allow him better access and regarded him smugly as he stroked her wedge-shaped head. He smoothed his hand down her damp spine and heard footsteps squelching in the mud behind him.

Anders dislodged the cat unceremoniously into the street. She yowled as he sat up quickly, head spinning. His hood fell wetly back and through the rain he saw a small girl peering at him over a pile of crates. She saw him staring, gasped, and vanished between two buildings in a flash of yellow skirts. 

By the time Anders had struggled to his feet the girl was long gone. He made a desultory attempt to search for her, but she had vanished into the dusty maze of alleys around the market place, and there was no knowing which way she might have gone. Yellow clothing was in fashion this year. Anders knew that he would be able to find any number of small girls in yellow skirts around the town, no doubt guarded by protective fathers who would take a dim view of any raggedy hedge wizard enquiring about their daughters' whereabouts.

The cat rubbed itself against Anders' leg and purred. Anders, surrendering to the inevitable, picked her up and took her home.

His life returned to what he had begun to think of as normal.

He woke at dawn every morning, drew his shop curtain back when the big clock in the marketplace struck eight and worked until dusk. Sometimes he would spend the evening in the tavern, or go for a walk, or listen to a poet or storyteller. More often he would return to his shop, where he practised magic surreptitiously behind the curtain while the cat watched and cleaned her coat.

It was a pleasant routine, if undemanding. Anders found that it suited him much better than the strict timetable he had become accustomed to in the Circle Tower. When he bought his dinner, he could eat chicken, or vegetables, or fish, or any combination of the three. He could drink water, or wine, or strong local cider from Easthill's apple orchards. He could skip dinner altogether and wander out into the countryside, or go to a tavern and listen to a fiddle player. People, he was beginning to discover, often did such things.

Best of all, Anders had the weekends off. He had ceased to wonder what people did with such vast oceans of free time.  He often wandered deep into the countryside, searching for remote places where he could practice magic in peace. Sometimes the cat would accompany him. Sometimes she stayed behind and slept on Anders' bedroll at his stall, where she shed hairs onto his pallet and vomited the less digestible parts of small rodents into his boots.

Anders' quiet idyll lasted for nearly a month.

And then everything changed.

It was the middle of the night. Anders was woken from a deep and dreamless sleep by the sound of someone knocking, no, he realised as he blinked sleep from his eyes, _hammering_ on the doorframe.

His first thought was _Templars,_ but Templars rarely bothered to warn mages of their presence. He threw of the covers, shrugged on his clothes, and picked up the knife he kept beside his pallet and which, he realised with mounting panic, he had no idea how to use. Carefully, blade at the ready, he drew the curtain.

At first he thought that the street outside was empty. As he adjusted his gaze downwards in response to a sniff he saw a small girl in a yellow skirt, wiping her nose with one hand and hanging onto Anders' doorframe with the other.  She gasped as she saw him, and took a step back, but she did not run away. Anders immediately concealed his knife in the folds of his long coat. He knelt down instinctively, bringing his eyes onto a level something more closely approaching the girl's face.

"Hello," he said gently.

The girl removed her hand from her nose and wiped it on her skirt. "Are you a good mage or a bad mage?" she asked. "I have to know."

Anders felt a slow spiral of terror trace its way up his spine. "I'm not a mage," he said hastily. "This fortune-telling business, it's-"

She swung on the doorframe. "I saw you with the cat."

Every instinct Anders had screamed at him to run. "What cat?" he asked casually just as the cat herself poked her head out from behind Anders' curtain and proved him a liar.

The child pointed. "That cat. She was hurt. I saw it. And you _healed_ her." She hesitated appeared to come to a conclusion. "I guess that makes you a good mage. That means you have to help." She sniffed again. "It doesn't matter. You've got to help. You're the only one I can ask."

Anders bit back the retort that he didn't _hav_ e to do anything. "Help what?" He looked at the child more closely and rephrased his question. "Help _who_?"

She sniffed and wiped her nose.

"Does someone need healing?"

The girl nodded. Tears leaked from her eyelids. Her eyes were swollen from crying.

"Just let me get some things." Anders pushed back behind the curtain. The instinct that had him tipping herbs and potions into a leather satchel had absolutely nothing to do with magic. Easthill was a small town, and it had no healer save the Chantry and a midwife. There was likely nobody but Anders who could help the child. He was a healer, after all.

The child hung on the curtain and watched Anders gather his things. The cat settled herself in the warm, Anders'-shaped space on his pallet, her tail curled like a question mark. When Anders had everything he thought he would need and a few things he hoped that he wouldn't, he drew the curtain back across the doorway and turned to the girl. "Where are we going?"

"Home," she said, leading Anders across the marketplace with a ferocious silence that would have seemed unnerving in any adult. Anders followed, matching his long stride to her short one. The small town's streets were very quiet. A sickle moon rode high in the sky and cast their paired shadows on the earth with a light so bright a man could have read a book by it.

The girl tugged Anders across the market square and down a maze of alleyways with her hand twisted tightly in his long coat. When they had left the outskirts of the town behind, she stopped and pointed at a small and shuttered house. 

"That one?" Anders asked.

The girl nodded.

Anders steeled himself and knocked, tapping his rings gently on the peeling paint. It crossed his mind, as he waited for a reply, that this might be a trap, and then dismissed the idea as preposterous. Surely no family would send their little girl to fetch a mage?

He was still debating the issue when the door opened a fraction. The face that peered through the crack was both worried and hostile. It looked Anders up and down and said "What do you want?" in a tone that was obviously unimpressed.

Anders nodded at the girl. "I'm told you need a healer," he said.

The woman inside hissed a curse at him and opened the door just wide enough to beckon the girl inside. "Temar, what are you doing?" She hushed the girl's whispered protests and turned back to Anders, shaking her head in denial.  "I don't-"

There was a shout from the back room of the house, followed by a sob. The woman turned away, her hand to her mouth as if she was choking back a cry, and forgot Anders for a moment. The child Temar reached out and took Anders' hand, her chubby child's fingers folding neatly into his much larger palm. She tugged him into the room, past the bemused woman and through the next door into the back room.

A small but not particularly surprising tableau faced him. A man knelt beside a low bed with his arm wrapped tightly around the tense shoulders of a small girl. He looked both frightened and confused. The child's face was slack, unconscious perhaps, but in all other aspects a near-exact copy of the girl who had led Anders inside.

"Temar, who is this?" snapped the man. He was shorter than Anders, thickset, with a mulish face that was so similar to both children that he could only be their father. The girl sobbed, flew to her sister's side and threw her arms around her, burrowing into her father's armpit like a rabbit.

The man turned to Anders, fists bunching despite his kneeling position. "Who are you?"

Anders stepped back, half-turning as the woman who had opened the front door came up behind him with her hands on her hips and a glare that was more intimidating than her husband's. He held up both his hands to them. "I'm a healer," he said, pointing to his satchel. "Let me help you. I have potions."

The pair exchanged a look that said that Anders couldn't possibly make the situation any worse. The father rose from the bed, his lips tight, and prised Temar from her sister's still form. "D' you want paying?" he asked gruffly as he cradled his daughter on his hip. "We haven't got much money, and-"

"It doesn't matter," the woman put in sharply. She reached out for Temar as the man crossed the room and cradled her daughter's head closely. "We'll find the money. Just _save_ her."

The man's face creased with misery. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then shook his head and reached out to clasp his wife's shoulders. It was not a good sign.

Anders slid the satchel from his shoulder and approached the bed. He'd gotten quite skilled in the use of healing herbs over the years, because a man who had cured the infection that would have left your baby son blinded or wife dead in childbirth was a man who you were that much more likely to assist. One glance at the girl was enough to know that no herbs he had would be sufficient. The child was fever-hot under his hands. Red spots marked her skin like a crimson leopard's pelt. As Anders watched she went into a convulsion, arched her back and bit her tongue so hard that blood trickled from the corners of her mouth.

The girl's seizure appeared to make up her father's mind for him. "Can you cure her?" he asked desperately, hope tingeing his voice.

Anders truly didn't know. Spotted fever was often deadly in a child as young and as obviously sick as this one was, but he wasn't about to tell her worried parents that."Take your other daughter away," he told them as he put his satchel down. "I need space to work."

The mother took Temar from her father and carried the weeping girl into the front room. Anders hardly registered their exit. He pushed up the sleeves of his coat, gritted his teeth and reached out for the Veil.

The rush of power was far stronger than he had experienced before. Anders, well schooled, abruptly stopped seeing the girl under his hands as a patient and visualised her instead as a problem about to be solved. The arrangement of bones and muscles was familiar, but this healing would not be as simple as pushing shattered bones into place. Infections had to be purged from the body meticulously until no trace remained. Once that part of the healing was complete, the damage the infection had caused to the patient then had to be repaired, inch by painstaking inch. Finally, he had to strengthen the girl just enough that she didn't immediately fall prey to another infection, but not so much that her body began to consume itself in a vain quest for fuel.

Anders flexed his fingers, touching pulse-points, and began. At first he concentrated on the child's lungs, frail sponges wrapped with tissue thin as cobweb and twined with a network of crimson vessels. He worked methodically, purging every airspace and lobe until both the child's lungs were clean. Next he soothed her body's response to the infection, cooling her fever as he did so and returning her body to some semblance of normality. Finally, he eliminated every telltale spot from her skin.

The next part was harder. Anders reached out to the Fade for more power, siphoning magic into the child like a conduit. Her cheeks flushed with health and her brittle hair turned sleek strand by strand. Anders' hands burned. His muscles ached as if he had just run a race. He pulled back, gasping and hoping that he'd done enough. The girl took a deep, ragged breath. Her cheeks hollowed. Her chest heaved.

Anders dragged mana from the very depths of his soul. The child drank it down as easily as if she was gulping water from a cup. He could see that she was almost healed, so nearly safe, but he was exhausted. It felt as if he'd pulled his patient from a lake, only for his strength to fail an arms-width from the shore.

_Let me help-_

The voice was friendly and kind as old First Enchanter Irving. Anders shook his head. He poured what little power he had left into the healing and cast until his hands smarted.

 _I can heal her,_ the voice offered. _All you have to do is call me from the Fade-_

Anders ignored it. He concentrated on the child, watching as she strengthened with every spark of magic that he summoned.

_I can-_

Anders pulled back from the Fade with smarting hands. The voices stopped as suddenly as if the demon had been gagged. The child coughed and began to cry. Anders scrutinised her squalling face for signs of illness, but he saw none. He stepped back hastily as the girl struggled to sit up, calling for her mother, and caught the table behind him with his heel. As he did so his knees gave way and he collapsed onto it, hands dangling between his legs, too drained to speak.

The woman dashed into the room. When she saw her daughter sitting up she hurried forwards and fell to her knees beside the bed. The father watched them with a dreadful hope. Anders rubbed his forehead between thumb and forefinger. He could have used a healing himself, but he truly didn't have the energy. "It's done," he said.

"I told you!" Temar said excitedly from the doorway. "I said he'd help."

The woman stroked her daughter's hair and looked up at Anders. "Was that magic?" she asked, a little fearfully.

Anders lowered his hand from his forehead. "Well it wasn't herbs and leeches, if that's what you mean." He looked at the healthy child and reasoned that it did no harm to remind the family what they owed him. "Either way, your daughter's better."

The woman flew forwards and hugged Anders. He found the gesture awkward rather than reassuring. Ten years in the Tower had made him uneasy with personal contact. He bent awkwardly over her shoulder and realised that the light that glinted through the oiled-cloth window was already rosy. Just how long, he wondered, had it taken him to heal the girl? 

It felt like an age to Anders until the woman released him, but it couldn't have been more than a few moments. She gazed at Anders like he was a miracle sent from the goddess herself. "May Andraste bless you!" she said.

Anders rubbed his eyes again. "I think that's very unlikely."

The woman ignored him. "Thank you," she said. "What can I get you? Do you accept payment?" She dug into the pockets of her apron. "Money? Goods?"

Anders shook his head. He steepled his fingers against his forehead to forestall the splitting headache that he knew would follow. He knew it was foolish to pass up a chance for cash, but right now he was too tired to care. "Maybe a bed for the night and some food, that's all."

"You can sleep here," the husband said instantly. He looked around the small two-room cottage, hospitality warring with practicality. Hospitality won out. "We don't have much room-"

"We have a hayloft," the woman said, "That is, if you're not too proud-"

Anders, drained to the bone, was too exhausted to refuse even a stall in their stable."Thanks," he said. "That would be most generous of you."

"Andraste's grace brought you to us," she said. "We won't turn you away. And we won't bother you for healing arts again."

They kept their word, but news spread. The old woman down the road hired Anders to cure her rheumatism two days later, and the butcher paid him to staunch the blood pouring from a cut finger the day after that. After that Anders had two or three patients every day waiting at his shop curtain. He knew that he should have left long before, but it was nice to be needed.

Anders stayed. 

 


	3. Chapter Three

Chapter Three:

It took Anders less than a week of healing every evening and fortune-telling most days to decide that enough was enough. By then he had been in Easthill long enough to know exactly who to speak to.

"I need a favour," he said one night to Garin, the innkeeper of the Three Kings. The Three Kings was the most disreputable inn in Easthill, which meant that it was probably hopelessly staid by most people's standards. But the inn _did_ have a reputation for smuggling, and Garin had an expression so virtuously honest that the man had to be hip-deep in corruption _somewhere_.

Anders had expected Garin to be evasive, but the innkeeper just nodded and reached for a glass. "What do you want?" he asked.

"Can you get lyrium?" Anders asked in a low voice. "Lesser potions, not the hard stuff. Weak as you can get it."

Garin paused in mid-pour to consider the request. Anders expected him to refuse but instead the innkeeper just nodded and continued pouring cider. "The wine cellar 'round the back," he said. "I'll meet you in three hours. Don't keep us waiting."

Three hours later he met Anders around the back of the inn and showed him down the narrow stairs into the wine cellar. The room looked much older than the inn itself. Its vaulted ceiling resembled a chantry crypt more closely than a storeroom. The air was chill and scented with strong spirits. Every inch of space was stuffed full of wine-casks, barrels of beer and mysterious sacks of dubious origin. Anders could hear the boots of the patrons echoing from the planks above his head.

"Ah," a throaty voice said. "You must be the man who wants the lyrium."

Anders jumped despite his best efforts. A small woman with cat-tilted eyes and a wide smile stepped into the lantern light. She wore distinctly piratical boots and a wide silk sash knotted around her waist. The hilt of an ornate sword jutted from the sash. She tapped her fingers on the sword-pommel as she looked Anders up and down. Satisfied, she nodded. "It'll cost you."

Anders relaxed. He had been expecting more objections than pure mercenary greed. "I can pay. How much?"

Miyo shrugged; a lithe motion that set her swords swinging, and perched upon the rim of a barrel. "That depends. Lyrium's not cheap." She grinned. "What's expensive is us not telling the Templars that you need it. Fifty silver. And that's a bargain."

Anders hesitated. "Per crate?"

"Per flask," she said flatly. "That is, unless you make a better offer." She cocked her head quizzically at him. "Any ideas?"

Anders doubted he had fifty silver if he sold all that he owned. "Just one," he said, experimenting with threats. "You could give it me for free, and I could not set you on fire." He flexed his fingers in what he hoped was a suitably magely manner.

Miyo sighed. "Mmm-hmmm," she said in a tone that was so dry Anders could have used it for kindling.

"I could," Anders said, concerned that she was not taking him seriously. He waved his hands again, somewhat less threateningly this time.

"I do not doubt it," Miyo said seriously. "Though you'd be silly to light a fire within such a confined space. I think that poor Garin would have something to say about the loss of all his stock. Which, being flammable, would most likely explode with some violence. Not to mention that the smoke would most likely choke us both." She looked at him with dark and unreadable eyes. "But being such a fearsome mage, you've already thought of that. Am I right?"

Anders felt suddenly awkward. "It was just an idea."

"Yes," she said. "A bad one."

"I have some coin," Anders offered.

"Not enough, I'd wager. That's fortunate for me. From what I hear of you, you're a very effective healer. My men could use your aid. That is, if you're not against treating bandits and smugglers wanted by the law." Her hand went again to the hilt of her ornate sword. "That way, we both get what we want, and you don't have to pay me in coin."

"I'll treat anyone who needs it." Anders said.

Then you can have the lyrium with thanks," she said. "You heal my men, and I'll make sure you have all that you need. And I'll make quite certain that the Templars hear no word of your presence here."

Now that was something Anders had not expected. "You'd do that?"

Miyo's bright smile twisted. "Certainly. The Templars are not known to be gentle with those who harbour apostates. It's to our advantage to conceal your presence. All I ask in return that we will have first claim on your services-"

Anders shook his head. "Not possible. If I'm already with a client-"

"Then of course we shall wait," Miyo said. "Despite what you will have heard, smugglers are not _completely_ heartless.  And most of us have family in the town. I have only one other condition."

"Which is?"

"Don't threaten me again." Miyo's knife-edge smile broadened into a grin. "Leave that to the professionals, ser mage. You are so laughably _bad_ at it."

Anders sighed. "So you don't find me dangerously attractive?"

"You?" She considered him. "No. Cute, maybe."

"Cute?"

"It's a start," she said consolingly.

"I suppose so." Anders said. All in all, he decided, he could have come out much, much, worse. As he climbed the stairs from the cellar he found that he'd gained not only a source of lyrium, but also some measure of protection from the Templars and, in a small way, a friend.

By the end of the month he had no doubt that he was beginning to belong. He spent his days telling fortunes of dubious authenticity and his nights healing whatever injuries presented themselves at the hayloft door. His free time was spent failing to grow his beard past wheat-field stubble and becoming a not entirely respectable member of the community. Several of his more adventurous young clients had indicated that they might not find Anders' company completely repellent, and Anders was planning to do something about that just as soon as he worked out what it was that he should do.

It wasn't a bad life, as lives went. It wasn't lucrative or great or ambitious, but it was one that Anders felt that he could be proud of.

One weekend he went walking in the forests around the village, trying and failing to find anything in the area that remotely resembled a mountain. Despite the obvious and inevitable failure of his quest Anders found it a pleasant way to spend a day. The sky was as blue as Andraste's robes, and the flat sandy ground crunched pleasantly beneath his boots. He threaded his way through stands of pine forest, enjoying the sun and the feeling of stretching his legs. When he grew tired he stopped to rest by a stream, making a desultory attempt at searching the area for healing herbs before he slumped in the hollow made by the roots of a willow tree.

The shallow stream sparkled as bright as Anders' earrings in the sun. The wind blew the ripples this way and that as the willow swayed above his head. The tannin-stained waters reminded Anders of the peat-tinged streams of his childhood; cast like a tangled net across the high steppes of the Anderfels. A kingfisher flew like an azure-tipped arrow across the water.

Anders raised his right hand and idly conjured a thin sheet of blue flame that crackled over the surface of the stream and scorched the rushes on the opposite bank. A pair of black-winged damselflies fluttered away from the fire in sudden alarm, and Anders quenched the flame with a swift flick of his fingers. The damselflies fluttered off to land on a stand of yellow flag iris while Anders considered his next move.

Maybe if he practised enough he could use battle magic to fight the Templars. Anders was no combat mage and the Templars were just as well armoured against magic as steel, but it was another option. Besides, Anders rather liked the idea of shooting glowing balls of lightning from his hands.

He reached into the Fade again and conjured a ball of smokeless azure flame. Breaking the Veil was easier with each attempt. Anders could heal spotted fever with no trouble at all. He could seal a cut with a touch and set bones with the pressure of a palm. But none of what he had learned so far would be any use if the Templars came for him.

His fireball floated up to scorch the willow branches. Anders split the orb into a dozen globes the size of cherries and spun them around like a glowing orrery. He flicked his wrist and sent the whole ensemble hissing into the stream, then conjured a small and localised lightning storm.

 _You want more power_?  A small voice hissed from the Fade into thin air. _I can show you things you never dreamed .I can help you fight the Templars. Just trust me._

"Ah," said Anders aloud. "There's always a catch, isn't there?"

The voice did not reply. Anders flopped onto his back. As he stared into the blue bowl of the sky he saw sparks rise above the pines on the brow of the hill. The sparks were sulphur-yellow, but close enough to Anders' own spells for him to recognise them as magical. He rolled onto his chest, pushed hair from his face and watched the sky more intently. A shower of amber embers rewarded him. Anders watched a while longer, but he saw nothing more. The whispering demons did not return. Anders was alone.

He raised himself on his elbows and looked around. The sun was a thin slice of saffron yellow beneath low grey clouds. The path that led back to Easthill was empty for as far as he could see, and there was no sign of anybody on the road that led across the ford further up the stream. The air smelled of pine and the warm brown scent of rotting wood. Shadows barred the grass. It was getting late. All in all, Anders decided, he should probably go.

He stood up and began to brush pine needles from his coat, balancing one hand against the willow tree's rough bark for balance. As he did so, he heard the clash of swords.

Anders froze. He wondered if he had been mistaken, but swordplay was the sort of sound that once heard was hard to mistake. He heard a scream, quickly choked away, and his heart sank.

_Templars._

It was possible that there was a perfectly logical explanation for a battle in the middle of the forest, miles from the nearest town, but it was, Anders thought, unlikely. He could probably tie himself to a rock and leap into the ocean and the last thing he would see would be a Templar wearing a large grin and carrying a pair of ensorcelled manacles.

If whoever was fighting in the woods was a Templar, then it was almost certain that they were after another mage. There were two other hedge wizards operating in Easthill town, but one was a midwife and the other one juggled flame and set his farts on fire. Anders was as sure as he could be that neither of them had any magical talent whatsoever. He knew of no other apostates in the area, but most renegade mages travelled around. Anders had seen his fair share of open road during his own short-lived escape attempts.

Anders flicked his fingers. A small curl of smoke rose from his hand. He cursed his luck and crept towards the battle.

The forest floor was carpeted with a thick layer of pine needles that made it easy for Anders to move quietly. He wondered as he walked whether his tall, lanky body would make it possible for him to hide behind a pine tree should it be required, then discarded the idea.

He followed the sound of clashing steel through the forest until the noise of fighting stopped abruptly. Too abruptly. The whole forest was gripped by an eerie silence. Anders shifted, boots crunching on fallen branches, and then he heard the scream again.

Like all screams, it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. Anders, poised to run, was at a loss exactly where to run _to_.

The scream didn't sound like Templars. It didn't sound like it had come from anybody living. That left-

Anders bolted back the way that he had come.

The first problem, he discovered, was that he didn't know which way he had come _from_. The trees all looked identical. The screams had thankfully ceased, which was a good thing, but meant that he also didn't know which direction to flee from.  

He stumbled into a clearing, blood pounding in his temples, pine needles knotted into the fur collar of his coat and magelight glowing at his fingertips. 

The first thing he saw was a dead man. The second and third things he saw were also dead men. The fourth was a dead woman. Anders noticed with mounting alarm the tattered remnants of a Templar tabard. No mage particularly wanted to see Templars, but that didn't mean Anders wanted to see them dead. And these Templars were definitely dead. There was no way they could possibly have been alive. 

  1. A half-built campfire smouldered in the centre of a clearing. A nearly stacked pile of logs beside it had miraculously escaped the destruction. The Templar boot burning fitfully in the embers had not. Shreds of clothes and scraps of tattered skin hung in the lower branches of the fir trees, and the smell of blood nearly drowned out the smell of pine and wood smoke. 



"I'm sorry that I didn't save you one," said a voice, and Anders nearly screamed.

 

 


	4. Chapter Four

Chapter Four.

Anders recoiled. He forced himself to stay where he was, hoping against all hope for a reasonable explanation as a man left the shelter of the trees and came towards him. The stranger was dressed in the remnants of bloodstained Circle robes. His eyes were deep-set, dark and very wide.

Anders' magelight dimmed and flickered out as his half-formed rescue plan melted like ice under a fireball. "What happened?" he asked stupidly.

The mage smiled. "My name is Irion," he said. He was stick-slender beneath his robes, nothing more than a skeleton wrapped in rags. "I'm from the Starkhaven Circle."

Anders took a step back. It was hard to make out just how many people had been murdered, but there were at least four dead men lying crushed on the forest floor. "You did this?" he demanded. "You killed them?"

The mage smiled a thin-lipped smile. "They had my phylactery. They wanted to take me back to the Circle, and when I wouldn't go they said they'd kill me instead. They were Templars." His smile widened into a mad grin. "They deserved it. You're a mage. You should understand."

"They were still people," Anders said quietly. He wondered whether he would be willing to kill to preserve his own freedom, and didn't like the answer. "Killing's one thing. This-" he gestured helplessly at the corpses. "This is _slaughter_."

"The Templars would enslave us all!" Irion protested. "I had to do it. It was the only way. They said I was possessed. But I'm not. Not yet." He spoke rapidly, the words sliding hoarsely into one another.  "I tried magic to keep them out. Offered them blood. But it only works for so long. Not long enough." He waved his hand around the gore-smeared clearing. "So much blood."

Anders' skin crawled. If the mage wasn't possessed, then he was surely not far from it. He stepped backwards towards the safety of the forest, wanting nothing more than to leave this blood-soaked clearing and wondering how long it would take the Templars to find the murdered corpses of their brethren. Not long, he guessed, and they wouldn't be happy when they did.

"Don't go." Irion's voice was half entreaty, half threat. The mad gleam lingered in his eyes. "I broke my phylactery. They can't track me now. The Templars won't have me." He advanced towards Anders. "The _demons,_ though-"

Anders wondered if the Templars were right after all and that mages outside the Circle really _were_ all insane. "You killed the Templars. You-you can fight the demons."

"You're right." The mage's glare hardened, stripping away all Anders' tawdry gems. "I can distract them, at least. Deal with them. Isn't that what demons do?"

"I-think so-" Anders backed away; realising that the other mage had come to some conclusion that he didn't particularly didn't want to think about. "I-I'll just go, shall I?"

"Don't leave." Irion's voice was hollow. "You can't leave."

Anders turned and ran.

He got all of three paces before something grabbed his ankle and he tumbled to the floor.

The Templar had been a tall woman in life, bulked out further by her armour. Even in death the remnants of her pauldrons still hung from her shoulders. She clutched Anders' ankle in a death grip, her fingers knotted in rigor mortis and her eyes blank. Anders screamed and tried to fight her off, but her grip only tightened until he could feel his bones grate. The clearing was alive around him, filled with the slithering, gnawing sound of crawling maggots in a week-old corpse.  The women's companions crunched wetly as they began to rise.

Anders had never gone through the Harrowing, so he had never been through the Veil except in dreams. He had heard other mages speak of it like a physical barrier, but he had never known it could be thinned like a sheet of tissue paper, never known how easily it could be ripped asunder. And he had never imagined what manner of creatures might come crawling through, if invited.

The four resurrected Templars dragged Anders to his knees. He looked up at four dead faces. The woman had punctured one eye in her awkward fall to the ground. Clear fluid trickled down her face. Her companions looked little better. One man had his cheek laid open to the bone. Another's face was twisted in a permanent rictus of fear.

Anders wondered if his own corpse's expression would be similar. For a moment, kneeling in the dirt as the eerily animated shadows of dead men twisted and writhed on the ground at his feet, he knew exactly why Templars put mages in the Circles.

Irion coughed. "I never thanked you for coming to my aid," he told Anders. The Templar corpses pushed closer and closer, close enough for Anders to feel crumpled metal at his back and smell the reek of rotting blood. "Not that you were much use. But it seems that you may be useful after all.  Have you ever heard of abominations?"

Anders nodded.

"That's what happens when a demon possesses a mage's corpse," Irion said as pleasantly as if he was teaching Tower apprentices. He gestured. Anders yelped as the Templars to either side of him each reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders. Their flesh looked like pounded meat, but the strength in those broken hands was surprising.

Irion scrabbled in the dirt and picked up a bloodstained knife. Anders flinched back, fear and revulsion crystallising into pure terror as the mage approached. The Circle had taught Anders how to heal, but nothing he had learned in the Tower had remotely prepared him for dealing with blood magic. It was the antithesis of Anders' own healing magic; chaos and entropy that broke bone, muscle and human flesh down into its component parts.

"Wait," he said desperately as Irion advanced. "There must be some other way. Nobody else has to die." He swallowed. " _I_ don't have to die."

"I can't wait." Irion snapped.  He held up the dagger, its honed blade gleaming in the firelight. The Templar woman grabbed Anders' right hand and dragged it out with bone-crushing strength. There was no chance he could pull back. If he'd tried to resist he'd just have dislocated his own elbow.

Irion raised the knife. The Templars gripped Anders with demon-possessed-force. His last fire spell sizzled weakly as a spent match against the corpses' hands. "Look," he said desperately. "You don't have to do this. Just-"

The knife fell.

Anders felt a sting of pain as the blade scored deeply across his wrist. Blood welled up, dark as wine. Irion dabbed his fingers in the wound, rubbing thumb and forefingers together until his hand was liberally coated with gore.  One of the Templars hissed hungrily. 

 Anders glanced at the corpses and looked away just as fast. The Templars' mouths were like holes jagged with teeth, their shadows on the sandy ground less and less human. Slug trails of dark blood oozed from their eyes.  Anders waited in mute terror for whatever would come. He wondered if Irion would kill him or whether the Templars would just plunge their claw-tipped hands into Anders' chest and squeeze his heart until it burst like a ripe tomato.

"I had an idea," Irion said pleasantly to Anders. "You're a mage. You can be a distraction. Maybe then they'll leave me alone." He made a signal to the corpses. "Rage, maybe. Or desire. That could be fun." 

To Anders' surprise, the Templars released him. He huddled in on himself; knees pressed to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, as if he made himself as small as he possibly could then the mage and his abominations would somehow misplace him.

Irion held up his right hand. "I have your blood," he said, and paused as if he was expecting Anders to react in some way. Anders just wondered how Irion could distinguish his blood from the gore that covered the mage. Maybe it was something to do with a blood mage: maybe it had to do with being crazy. He fervently hoped he never became either.

Irion laughed. "They don't teach you anything in the Circle these days, do they?" He reached into his robes and pulled out a blood-stained blue glass flask. "Drink this."

Anders recognised Circle lyrium when he saw it. "No," he said, and yelped as his hand reached out of its own accord to touch cold glass.

"I told you that I had your blood." Irion said. He produced a second flask, uncorked the bottle with his teeth and spat the cork away. "Drink it."

Anders watched in mingled repulsion, horror and fascination as his own long-fingered, freckled hands twisted bottle and cork until the stopper released with a gentle pop. His hand raised the bottle to the light, tilting it so the liquid inside sloshed and glittered, and then he lowered it to his mouth. Anders found that he had exactly as much control over his body as he had over his hands, which was none. He drank the lyrium. It tasted of cinnamon and spice.

The bottle contained exactly three swallows. With each gulp, Anders felt the world thin, the Veil thinning until it was as fragile as a soap bubble, stretching until it finally snapped. Anders drained the bottle to its dregs. The flask fell from his hands, and the forest clearing spun away.

The Fade took its place.

The sandy pine forest vanished completely, replaced by a great stone hall. Flagstones replaced soft earth and rafters arched over Anders' head instead of branches. A grand staircase stretched before him, large enough for a lord's palace. He caught a glimpse of a hazy and alien landscape behind windows of real leaded glass. The whole building seemed too perfect to be real, as if the Fade had shaped itself merely to conform to Anders' experiences in a way that wouldn't drive him crazy. He'd heard the mages in the Tower speak of a black city in the Fade. A hall that could have been part of any noble's mansion was not what he had expected.

The demons were.

There were two of them, rage and desire, each as familiar to Anders from lectures as the hall had been. The desire demon had curving horns instead of hair and wore scraps of gleaming gilt. The rage demon wore nothing at all. Its body was thickened, slug like and legless. Its mouth was a brilliant glowing gash, its eyes hard and bright as gems.

The desire demon smiled "Aha," she said in a voice that made Anders' mouth turn as dry as sandpaper. "Fresh meat."

Irion grabbed the collar of Anders' coat and thrust him towards the waiting demons like a hound puppy. "One tip," he said, his voice saner than Anders had heard before. "Don't fight. You'll get more if you bargain, and they'll win anyway."

Anders looked from glowing eyes to taloned hands as the demons circled him like wolves. "If you think," he said between gritted teeth, "that I am going to take your advice on anything, then you are very much mistaken."

Irion shrugged. "It's _your_ funeral," he told Anders. "Or given the circumstances, _your_ spirit wandering the pathways of the Fade forever. Your choice." He held out his staff in warning to the desire demon as she prowled towards him, chewing on one pointed nail meditatively. "Don't come near me. I'll make a deal. Take him, and never bother me again."

The desire demon ran a pointed nail across her teeth and nodded. "A swap is it?" she said, turning to Anders. "You want to escape the Circle, don't you? I can help. I can give you your heart's desire." She smiled, displaying a forked tongue and teeth that were far too pointed for comfort."Just let me in."

 "Don't listen," the rage demon hissed in a voice like water upon glowing coals. "You hate the Templars, don't you? Let's destroy them. I can help you." Its smile broadened. "It'll be fun."

Anders reached for his magic as Irion retreated up the massive staircase. It came easily-too easily for comfort. The Fade _was_ magic. He felt a burst of confidence that flared and faded like a spark in a dark room as the rage demon absorbed his spell into its igneous body without even slowing down. 

"It makes me so angry when mages don't just give up and die quietly," it said, voice rising into a howl.

"Speak for yourself," the desire demon said. She scratched at the strip of silk knotted around her hips. "I find it spices things up."

"Of course you do," the rage demon snarled. "It's your nature."

The desire demon laughed and darted forwards. Her clawed hands scored Anders' arm. He leapt back from her and ducked low as the rage demon reached for him with burning hands. The sleeve of his ridiculous coat smouldered, filling the hall with the reek of burning feathers as the demons laughed and circled.  Anders panicked, tossing lightning at the demons as easily as he cast healing spells, his breath ragged, hands burning with borrowed power. All thought of tactics vanished, everything apart from pure survival forgotten in a burst of pure adrenaline. He could feel the demons' yearning as a nearly palpable force. The demons _craved_. They wanted to crawl inside his skin, use him like a meat puppet. Their hunger terrified him.

Frost magic made the rage demon howl and back away, and fire magic worked just fine on the desire demon. But whatever he did to them, they just kept coming. Anders charred the desire demon's skin to glowing ash and froze the rage demon's bones to icy shards. He sent lightning dancing from the desire demon's horns, but she just smiled. After what felt like eternity but was probably no more than five minutes, Anders knew that he was losing. Magic was easy to draw from the Fade but the demons were much stronger opponents than the fellow Circle apprentices that were all that he was used to fighting.  Besides, there were was two of them and one of Anders and they wore him down easily between them. One sleeve of Anders' coat already hung in shreds from the desire demon's talons, and half his ponytail was smouldering.

"Just give up," the rage demon said in a growl like hissing embers. "It'll be easier for all of us."

"Not to mention much more pleasant," the desire demon purred. "All you have to do is choose."

Anders drew back, palms smarting. Even the Fade's reserves of magic were not inexhaustible, and he was tiring fast. He had to think of a plan, and he had to do it soon.

"How does this work?" he said slowly.

The desire demon paused; claws upraised, and exchanged a confused glance with the rage demon's glowing, slitted eyes.

"How does what work?" smouldered the rage demon.

"Possession.  I mean, from where I'm standing it looks like you're trying pretty hard to kill me. What happens if I die? What use am I then?" He gave them both his most disarming grin, although he'd never felt less like smiling in his life. "One of you is going to have me; you've made that pretty clear.  Why not sort it out amongst yourselves? Whoever wins," he held out his arms, "gets the prize. Just promise you won't hurt me too bad, when it comes?"

There was a moment where he thought he'd lost them, and then both demons moved. The rage demon spun around and caught the other demon's shoulder with a bolt of fire. She staggered, and the rage demon rolled over her like a wave, covering her slender body with a tide of molten flame. Anders thought the battle would have stopped there, but the desire demon only laughed. She reached out with pointed purple talons and ripped chunks of phosphorescent flesh from her skin handful by handful, while the rage demon hissed and slithered and did everything it could to flee. When there was nothing left but a pile of glowing embers she smiled and stepped forwards, holding out a taloned hand to Anders. Her horns glowed red with captured heat. Her scraps of jewellery had melted and slid down the curves of her body to meld with the vanquished demon's molten form.

"Time to pay up, mage," she hissed.

Anders held very still as she approached him. She settled herself against his body, hips pressing against his. One hand reached around his shoulders. She nipped at his ear with sharp pointed teeth and Anders yelped as blood dripped onto the shoulder of his coat.

"I thought you said this wouldn't hurt."

She laughed throatily. "Demons lie," she told him.

Anders ran his right hand up over her taut belly, cupping her left breast. He leaned in close and whispered. "So do mages."

The Arcane Bolt punched a fist sized hole between the desire demon's breasts. She flew backwards, eyes wide, toppled over onto her side and vanished.

Anders woke just as her silhouette flickered out. 

He came to himself curled in the clearing, with the scent of blood and pine needles stinging his nostrils and the curdled taste of lyrium coating his throat. The sun was still a sultry yellow, halfway to sunset, and the barred shadows of the dead Templars striped the ground around him. Their faces were nowhere near human.

Anders dragged himself to hands and knees, fighting a splitting headache. When he could think about anything other the pain he looked up and saw Irion leaning on his staff.

"That wasn't what I expected," the blood mage said. He stretched and looked around as if seeing the clearing for the first time. His voice was different; rich, confident, avuncular.  "Still, it got them off my back." He looked ten years younger, his back less bent, his eyes less wild, but still with that unsettling hint of madness lurking in their depths.  "They'll return, of course. It won't take long." He tilted his head back and looked at Anders down his nose. "Whatever shall I do with you?"

Anders wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve. The leather was intact, somehow, and all the bruises and cuts he had acquired in the Fade had vanished through the Veil. "You could let me go?" he suggested, and was surprised when the mage nodded.

"Why not?" he said. "I can't keep you caged, after all. But your performance in the Fade won't hold the demons back for long." He sighed, crouched down and reached out towards Anders with hands that were still stained with blood. "I must have some insurance. Hold out your hand."

Ander shuffled away. His back hit Templar greaves and he winced. "I told you in the Fade that I'm not doing anything you say."

Irion sighed. "Don't make the mistake of assuming that you have a choice," he said and held up his bloodstained hand.

Anders stifled a yell as the scab on his wrist began to burn. He pushed up his right sleeve to examine the wound. Droplets of crimson blood leaked from the scab and became a stream as Anders watched. Irion reached out and gripped his wrist with cold fingers. He picked up the empty lyrium vial from the ground and held it under the flow, tilting the vial critically to examine it like an alchemist studying an interesting chemical reaction. When the flask was full he stoppered it and held it up to the crimson rays of the setting sun. "Do you know what this is?"

Anders clamped his left hand around the wound. Blood leaked between his fingers despite the pressure. If Irion didn't stop soon he was going to bleed to death. "It's a phylactery."

Irion nodded and stowed the small flask away in his robes. "Correct," he said. "Just like the Tower. Not an easy spell, but it means that I can find you later." He bared his teeth in an expression that should have been a smile. "In case I have need."

Anders wondered why he was bothering to try and staunch his wound. It would probably be easier and more pleasant to bleed out on the sandy soil rather than to endure whatever gruesome, abominable fate Irion had in mind for him.  But the blood mage flicked a finger and the cut dried up, fading to a pale scar as Anders watched with dismay

"Don't try to run," advised Irion. "You've found a nice little town here. I can see why you stayed. It would be such a pity if I had to use their blood to appease the demons."

Fear gripped Anders' heart with a wrench. He hadn't spared a thought for the villagers. "You wouldn't."

Irion sighed. "Look around. There are very few things I wouldn't do to save my hide." He stood up and patted Anders on the head. "Just like most mages.  Do take care of yourself. Mage blood is so much more powerful than peasants'. It would be a shame to have to resort to wholesale slaughter. But I can hardly keep you here without a great deal of trouble, and you're no use to me dead. I'll be back when I need you again, never fear."

"Just kill me," choked Anders. "Kill me and get it over with."

"Not a chance." Irion stretched out a hand and ruffled Anders' hair. "Farewell. Until we meet again."

Anders didn't look up to see the blood mage go. He didn't move for a long time after the man had left the clearing. He waited until the sound of his own ragged breathing was almost drowned by the sounds of night birds and small stealthy creatures. By the time he stood unsteadily to make his way back to Easthill, the moon was high and the other mage was long gone.

The fear stayed with Anders.

He went straight back to his shop and stayed there for the next two days. He didn't eat much, and he didn't sleep at all, fearing what terrors the Fade might hold for him if he tried. By the end of his self-imposed exile, selling himself to a desire demon was starting to look like his most constructive option. Coming himself to death was certainly more appealing than any of the other paths available.

He opened the shop a day later because he had no money left, but things started to go wrong. Easthill was not what Anders remembered. Maybe it never had been. Buildings caught on fire, burning to the ground without intervention, and nobody bothered to rebuild. A man was stabbed in the Three Kings, and nobody called on Anders until the victim had gasped his last breath. What wounds he did heal were senseless mistakes; a woodcarver who had slipped with his knife and nearly severed his thumb, a fisherman from the river who had jabbed a fishing hook through his lip by accident. Miyo's raiders stopped visiting, and Anders heard that they'd been massacred by a bunch of mercenaries out of Lothering. He didn't bother to check if the rumours were true, because he suspected that they weren't. He did wonder whether sacrificing himself would have saved the lives of Miyo and her men, and decided he didn't want to know the answer.

The only other permanent hedge wizard in Easthill, a grey-haired woman Anders rather liked, packed up her shop after three days.  "It's not worth staying," she said, handing Anders a basket filled with salves and herb-cures. "I've been in this situation before. Blood mages move in and sooner or later the townsfolk start blaming every problem on you. Things go bad fast. You better go yourself. I don't think that you have long." 

Anders stayed. He didn't know what else to do.

A day later he returned to his little shop to find it wrecked. The geode was shattered, obscenities smeared over the blue stars on the wall. The tarot cards had been burned. Anders' little cat lay in the centre of the floor, throat cut and tabby fur smeared with thick dark blood. The last of Anders' tarot pack lay upon her motionless flanks. The magician stared up at Anders with pinprick black ink eyes.

Anders gathered the cat into his arms, stroking her blood-stained fur mechanically. He stared around at the debris of his neat little life and choked back tears.

"Healer?" a soft voice asked from the doorway.

Anders spun, his palms blazing with blue flame.  Temar drew back with a gasp, her eyes wide. Anders quenched the spell instantly. He expected her to run, but instead she went to duck inside. He stopped her with a gesture. Aside from the blood and the sharp fragments of the amethyst geode, who knew what dark spells might lurk beneath the rubble? "Don't come in," he told her. "It's not safe."

She nodded; a small tight gesture. "Templars are coming," she said. "My da told me to tell you. You better go."

"How'd you know?"

She gave him a disbelieving glance that was far too old for her."It's all over town. You gotta go, Anders."

"I can't," Anders retorted. He hadn't listened to marketplace gossip for days, but Temar's news had given him an idea. It was an idea he didn't allow himself to think too hard about. "Or maybe I can."

Temar shrugged. "You gotta go," she said again, and ran.

Anders cradled the dead cat in his arms and watched her go. By the time he turned back into the shop he had made up his mind. He spent a day cleaning the place, carefully scrubbing the obscenities from the walls and sweeping away the smashed crystal and charred tarot cards. He burned his bedroll in a field outside the city and gave away the furniture to whoever wanted it. One way or another, he guessed he would not be coming back.

Once the shop's bare walls had been scrubbed spotless Anders took the little cat outside and buried her in a clearing outside the city gates. When he was done he put on his ridiculous feathered coat, drew the curtain across the shop door and went to find the Templars.

 Chapter Four.

Anders recoiled. He forced himself to stay where he was, hoping against all hope for a reasonable explanation as a man left the shelter of the trees and came towards him. The stranger was dressed in the remnants of bloodstained Circle robes. His eyes were deep-set, dark and very wide.

Anders' magelight dimmed and flickered out as his half-formed rescue plan melted like ice under a fireball. "What happened?" he asked stupidly.

The mage smiled. "My name is Irion," he said. He was stick-slender beneath his robes, nothing more than a skeleton wrapped in rags. "I'm from the Starkhaven Circle."

Anders took a step back. It was hard to make out just how many people had been murdered, but there were at least four dead men lying crushed on the forest floor. "You did this?" he demanded. "You killed them?"

The mage smiled a thin-lipped smile. "They had my phylactery. They wanted to take me back to the Circle, and when I wouldn't go they said they'd kill me instead. They were Templars." His smile widened into a mad grin. "They deserved it. You're a mage. You should understand."

"They were still people," Anders said quietly. He wondered whether he would be willing to kill to preserve his own freedom, and didn't like the answer. "Killing's one thing. This-" he gestured helplessly at the corpses. "This is _slaughter_."

"The Templars would enslave us all!" Irion protested. "I had to do it. It was the only way. They said I was possessed. But I'm not. Not yet." He spoke rapidly, the words sliding hoarsely into one another.  "I tried magic to keep them out. Offered them blood. But it only works for so long. Not long enough." He waved his hand around the gore-smeared clearing. "So much blood."

Anders' skin crawled. If the mage wasn't possessed, then he was surely not far from it. He stepped backwards towards the safety of the forest, wanting nothing more than to leave this blood-soaked clearing and wondering how long it would take the Templars to find the murdered corpses of their brethren. Not long, he guessed, and they wouldn't be happy when they did.

"Don't go." Irion's voice was half entreaty, half threat. The mad gleam lingered in his eyes. "I broke my phylactery. They can't track me now. The Templars won't have me." He advanced towards Anders. "The _demons,_ though-"

Anders wondered if the Templars were right after all and that mages outside the Circle really _were_ all insane. "You killed the Templars. You-you can fight the demons."

"You're right." The mage's glare hardened, stripping away all Anders' tawdry gems. "I can distract them, at least. Deal with them. Isn't that what demons do?"

"I-think so-" Anders backed away; realising that the other mage had come to some conclusion that he didn't particularly didn't want to think about. "I-I'll just go, shall I?"

"Don't leave." Irion's voice was hollow. "You can't leave."

Anders turned and ran.

He got all of three paces before something grabbed his ankle and he tumbled to the floor.

The Templar had been a tall woman in life, bulked out further by her armour. Even in death the remnants of her pauldrons still hung from her shoulders. She clutched Anders' ankle in a death grip, her fingers knotted in rigor mortis and her eyes blank. Anders screamed and tried to fight her off, but her grip only tightened until he could feel his bones grate. The clearing was alive around him, filled with the slithering, gnawing sound of crawling maggots in a week-old corpse.  The women's companions crunched wetly as they began to rise.

Anders had never gone through the Harrowing, so he had never been through the Veil except in dreams. He had heard other mages speak of it like a physical barrier, but he had never known it could be thinned like a sheet of tissue paper, never known how easily it could be ripped asunder. And he had never imagined what manner of creatures might come crawling through, if invited.

The four resurrected Templars dragged Anders to his knees. He looked up at four dead faces. The woman had punctured one eye in her awkward fall to the ground. Clear fluid trickled down her face. Her companions looked little better. One man had his cheek laid open to the bone. Another's face was twisted in a permanent rictus of fear.

Anders wondered if his own corpse's expression would be similar. For a moment, kneeling in the dirt as the eerily animated shadows of dead men twisted and writhed on the ground at his feet, he knew exactly why Templars put mages in the Circles.

Irion coughed. "I never thanked you for coming to my aid," he told Anders. The Templar corpses pushed closer and closer, close enough for Anders to feel crumpled metal at his back and smell the reek of rotting blood. "Not that you were much use. But it seems that you may be useful after all.  Have you ever heard of abominations?"

Anders nodded.

"That's what happens when a demon possesses a mage's corpse," Irion said as pleasantly as if he was teaching Tower apprentices. He gestured. Anders yelped as the Templars to either side of him each reached out and grabbed him by the shoulders. Their flesh looked like pounded meat, but the strength in those broken hands was surprising.

Irion scrabbled in the dirt and picked up a bloodstained knife. Anders flinched back, fear and revulsion crystallising into pure terror as the mage approached. The Circle had taught Anders how to heal, but nothing he had learned in the Tower had remotely prepared him for dealing with blood magic. It was the antithesis of Anders' own healing magic; chaos and entropy that broke bone, muscle and human flesh down into its component parts.

"Wait," he said desperately as Irion advanced. "There must be some other way. Nobody else has to die." He swallowed. " _I_ don't have to die."

"I can't wait." Irion snapped.  He held up the dagger, its honed blade gleaming in the firelight. The Templar woman grabbed Anders' right hand and dragged it out with bone-crushing strength. There was no chance he could pull back. If he'd tried to resist he'd just have dislocated his own elbow.

Irion raised the knife. The Templars gripped Anders with demon-possessed-force. His last fire spell sizzled weakly as a spent match against the corpses' hands. "Look," he said desperately. "You don't have to do this. Just-"

The knife fell.

Anders felt a sting of pain as the blade scored deeply across his wrist. Blood welled up, dark as wine. Irion dabbed his fingers in the wound, rubbing thumb and forefingers together until his hand was liberally coated with gore.  One of the Templars hissed hungrily. 

 Anders glanced at the corpses and looked away just as fast. The Templars' mouths were like holes jagged with teeth, their shadows on the sandy ground less and less human. Slug trails of dark blood oozed from their eyes.  Anders waited in mute terror for whatever would come. He wondered if Irion would kill him or whether the Templars would just plunge their claw-tipped hands into Anders' chest and squeeze his heart until it burst like a ripe tomato.

"I had an idea," Irion said pleasantly to Anders. "You're a mage. You can be a distraction. Maybe then they'll leave me alone." He made a signal to the corpses. "Rage, maybe. Or desire. That could be fun." 

To Anders' surprise, the Templars released him. He huddled in on himself; knees pressed to his chest and his arms wrapped around them, as if he made himself as small as he possibly could then the mage and his abominations would somehow misplace him.

Irion held up his right hand. "I have your blood," he said, and paused as if he was expecting Anders to react in some way. Anders just wondered how Irion could distinguish his blood from the gore that covered the mage. Maybe it was something to do with a blood mage: maybe it had to do with being crazy. He fervently hoped he never became either.

Irion laughed. "They don't teach you anything in the Circle these days, do they?" He reached into his robes and pulled out a blood-stained blue glass flask. "Drink this."

Anders recognised Circle lyrium when he saw it. "No," he said, and yelped as his hand reached out of its own accord to touch cold glass.

"I told you that I had your blood." Irion said. He produced a second flask, uncorked the bottle with his teeth and spat the cork away. "Drink it."

Anders watched in mingled repulsion, horror and fascination as his own long-fingered, freckled hands twisted bottle and cork until the stopper released with a gentle pop. His hand raised the bottle to the light, tilting it so the liquid inside sloshed and glittered, and then he lowered it to his mouth. Anders found that he had exactly as much control over his body as he had over his hands, which was none. He drank the lyrium. It tasted of cinnamon and spice.

The bottle contained exactly three swallows. With each gulp, Anders felt the world thin, the Veil thinning until it was as fragile as a soap bubble, stretching until it finally snapped. Anders drained the bottle to its dregs. The flask fell from his hands, and the forest clearing spun away.

The Fade took its place.

The sandy pine forest vanished completely, replaced by a great stone hall. Flagstones replaced soft earth and rafters arched over Anders' head instead of branches. A grand staircase stretched before him, large enough for a lord's palace. He caught a glimpse of a hazy and alien landscape behind windows of real leaded glass. The whole building seemed too perfect to be real, as if the Fade had shaped itself merely to conform to Anders' experiences in a way that wouldn't drive him crazy. He'd heard the mages in the Tower speak of a black city in the Fade. A hall that could have been part of any noble's mansion was not what he had expected.

The demons were.

There were two of them, rage and desire, each as familiar to Anders from lectures as the hall had been. The desire demon had curving horns instead of hair and wore scraps of gleaming gilt. The rage demon wore nothing at all. Its body was thickened, slug like and legless. Its mouth was a brilliant glowing gash, its eyes hard and bright as gems.

The desire demon smiled "Aha," she said in a voice that made Anders' mouth turn as dry as sandpaper. "Fresh meat."

Irion grabbed the collar of Anders' coat and thrust him towards the waiting demons like a hound puppy. "One tip," he said, his voice saner than Anders had heard before. "Don't fight. You'll get more if you bargain, and they'll win anyway."

Anders looked from glowing eyes to taloned hands as the demons circled him like wolves. "If you think," he said between gritted teeth, "that I am going to take your advice on anything, then you are very much mistaken."

Irion shrugged. "It's _your_ funeral," he told Anders. "Or given the circumstances, _your_ spirit wandering the pathways of the Fade forever. Your choice." He held out his staff in warning to the desire demon as she prowled towards him, chewing on one pointed nail meditatively. "Don't come near me. I'll make a deal. Take him, and never bother me again."

The desire demon ran a pointed nail across her teeth and nodded. "A swap is it?" she said, turning to Anders. "You want to escape the Circle, don't you? I can help. I can give you your heart's desire." She smiled, displaying a forked tongue and teeth that were far too pointed for comfort."Just let me in."

 "Don't listen," the rage demon hissed in a voice like water upon glowing coals. "You hate the Templars, don't you? Let's destroy them. I can help you." Its smile broadened. "It'll be fun."

Anders reached for his magic as Irion retreated up the massive staircase. It came easily-too easily for comfort. The Fade _was_ magic. He felt a burst of confidence that flared and faded like a spark in a dark room as the rage demon absorbed his spell into its igneous body without even slowing down. 

"It makes me so angry when mages don't just give up and die quietly," it said, voice rising into a howl.

"Speak for yourself," the desire demon said. She scratched at the strip of silk knotted around her hips. "I find it spices things up."

"Of course you do," the rage demon snarled. "It's your nature."

The desire demon laughed and darted forwards. Her clawed hands scored Anders' arm. He leapt back from her and ducked low as the rage demon reached for him with burning hands. The sleeve of his ridiculous coat smouldered, filling the hall with the reek of burning feathers as the demons laughed and circled.  Anders panicked, tossing lightning at the demons as easily as he cast healing spells, his breath ragged, hands burning with borrowed power. All thought of tactics vanished, everything apart from pure survival forgotten in a burst of pure adrenaline. He could feel the demons' yearning as a nearly palpable force. The demons _craved_. They wanted to crawl inside his skin, use him like a meat puppet. Their hunger terrified him.

Frost magic made the rage demon howl and back away, and fire magic worked just fine on the desire demon. But whatever he did to them, they just kept coming. Anders charred the desire demon's skin to glowing ash and froze the rage demon's bones to icy shards. He sent lightning dancing from the desire demon's horns, but she just smiled. After what felt like eternity but was probably no more than five minutes, Anders knew that he was losing. Magic was easy to draw from the Fade but the demons were much stronger opponents than the fellow Circle apprentices that were all that he was used to fighting.  Besides, there were was two of them and one of Anders and they wore him down easily between them. One sleeve of Anders' coat already hung in shreds from the desire demon's talons, and half his ponytail was smouldering.

"Just give up," the rage demon said in a growl like hissing embers. "It'll be easier for all of us."

"Not to mention much more pleasant," the desire demon purred. "All you have to do is choose."

Anders drew back, palms smarting. Even the Fade's reserves of magic were not inexhaustible, and he was tiring fast. He had to think of a plan, and he had to do it soon.

"How does this work?" he said slowly.

The desire demon paused; claws upraised, and exchanged a confused glance with the rage demon's glowing, slitted eyes.

"How does what work?" smouldered the rage demon.

"Possession.  I mean, from where I'm standing it looks like you're trying pretty hard to kill me. What happens if I die? What use am I then?" He gave them both his most disarming grin, although he'd never felt less like smiling in his life. "One of you is going to have me; you've made that pretty clear.  Why not sort it out amongst yourselves? Whoever wins," he held out his arms, "gets the prize. Just promise you won't hurt me too bad, when it comes?"

There was a moment where he thought he'd lost them, and then both demons moved. The rage demon spun around and caught the other demon's shoulder with a bolt of fire. She staggered, and the rage demon rolled over her like a wave, covering her slender body with a tide of molten flame. Anders thought the battle would have stopped there, but the desire demon only laughed. She reached out with pointed purple talons and ripped chunks of phosphorescent flesh from her skin handful by handful, while the rage demon hissed and slithered and did everything it could to flee. When there was nothing left but a pile of glowing embers she smiled and stepped forwards, holding out a taloned hand to Anders. Her horns glowed red with captured heat. Her scraps of jewellery had melted and slid down the curves of her body to meld with the vanquished demon's molten form.

"Time to pay up, mage," she hissed.

Anders held very still as she approached him. She settled herself against his body, hips pressing against his. One hand reached around his shoulders. She nipped at his ear with sharp pointed teeth and Anders yelped as blood dripped onto the shoulder of his coat.

"I thought you said this wouldn't hurt."

She laughed throatily. "Demons lie," she told him.

Anders ran his right hand up over her taut belly, cupping her left breast. He leaned in close and whispered. "So do mages."

The Arcane Bolt punched a fist sized hole between the desire demon's breasts. She flew backwards, eyes wide, toppled over onto her side and vanished.

Anders woke just as her silhouette flickered out. 

He came to himself curled in the clearing, with the scent of blood and pine needles stinging his nostrils and the curdled taste of lyrium coating his throat. The sun was still a sultry yellow, halfway to sunset, and the barred shadows of the dead Templars striped the ground around him. Their faces were nowhere near human.

Anders dragged himself to hands and knees, fighting a splitting headache. When he could think about anything other the pain he looked up and saw Irion leaning on his staff.

"That wasn't what I expected," the blood mage said. He stretched and looked around as if seeing the clearing for the first time. His voice was different; rich, confident, avuncular.  "Still, it got them off my back." He looked ten years younger, his back less bent, his eyes less wild, but still with that unsettling hint of madness lurking in their depths.  "They'll return, of course. It won't take long." He tilted his head back and looked at Anders down his nose. "Whatever shall I do with you?"

Anders wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve. The leather was intact, somehow, and all the bruises and cuts he had acquired in the Fade had vanished through the Veil. "You could let me go?" he suggested, and was surprised when the mage nodded.

"Why not?" he said. "I can't keep you caged, after all. But your performance in the Fade won't hold the demons back for long." He sighed, crouched down and reached out towards Anders with hands that were still stained with blood. "I must have some insurance. Hold out your hand."

Ander shuffled away. His back hit Templar greaves and he winced. "I told you in the Fade that I'm not doing anything you say."

Irion sighed. "Don't make the mistake of assuming that you have a choice," he said and held up his bloodstained hand.

Anders stifled a yell as the scab on his wrist began to burn. He pushed up his right sleeve to examine the wound. Droplets of crimson blood leaked from the scab and became a stream as Anders watched. Irion reached out and gripped his wrist with cold fingers. He picked up the empty lyrium vial from the ground and held it under the flow, tilting the vial critically to examine it like an alchemist studying an interesting chemical reaction. When the flask was full he stoppered it and held it up to the crimson rays of the setting sun. "Do you know what this is?"

Anders clamped his left hand around the wound. Blood leaked between his fingers despite the pressure. If Irion didn't stop soon he was going to bleed to death. "It's a phylactery."

Irion nodded and stowed the small flask away in his robes. "Correct," he said. "Just like the Tower. Not an easy spell, but it means that I can find you later." He bared his teeth in an expression that should have been a smile. "In case I have need."

Anders wondered why he was bothering to try and staunch his wound. It would probably be easier and more pleasant to bleed out on the sandy soil rather than to endure whatever gruesome, abominable fate Irion had in mind for him.  But the blood mage flicked a finger and the cut dried up, fading to a pale scar as Anders watched with dismay

"Don't try to run," advised Irion. "You've found a nice little town here. I can see why you stayed. It would be such a pity if I had to use their blood to appease the demons."

Fear gripped Anders' heart with a wrench. He hadn't spared a thought for the villagers. "You wouldn't."

Irion sighed. "Look around. There are very few things I wouldn't do to save my hide." He stood up and patted Anders on the head. "Just like most mages.  Do take care of yourself. Mage blood is so much more powerful than peasants'. It would be a shame to have to resort to wholesale slaughter. But I can hardly keep you here without a great deal of trouble, and you're no use to me dead. I'll be back when I need you again, never fear."

"Just kill me," choked Anders. "Kill me and get it over with."

"Not a chance." Irion stretched out a hand and ruffled Anders' hair. "Farewell. Until we meet again."

Anders didn't look up to see the blood mage go. He didn't move for a long time after the man had left the clearing. He waited until the sound of his own ragged breathing was almost drowned by the sounds of night birds and small stealthy creatures. By the time he stood unsteadily to make his way back to Easthill, the moon was high and the other mage was long gone.

The fear stayed with Anders.

He went straight back to his shop and stayed there for the next two days. He didn't eat much, and he didn't sleep at all, fearing what terrors the Fade might hold for him if he tried. By the end of his self-imposed exile, selling himself to a desire demon was starting to look like his most constructive option. Coming himself to death was certainly more appealing than any of the other paths available.

He opened the shop a day later because he had no money left, but things started to go wrong. Easthill was not what Anders remembered. Maybe it never had been. Buildings caught on fire, burning to the ground without intervention, and nobody bothered to rebuild. A man was stabbed in the Three Kings, and nobody called on Anders until the victim had gasped his last breath. What wounds he did heal were senseless mistakes; a woodcarver who had slipped with his knife and nearly severed his thumb, a fisherman from the river who had jabbed a fishing hook through his lip by accident. Miyo's raiders stopped visiting, and Anders heard that they'd been massacred by a bunch of mercenaries out of Lothering. He didn't bother to check if the rumours were true, because he suspected that they weren't. He did wonder whether sacrificing himself would have saved the lives of Miyo and her men, and decided he didn't want to know the answer.

The only other permanent hedge wizard in Easthill, a grey-haired woman Anders rather liked, packed up her shop after three days.  "It's not worth staying," she said, handing Anders a basket filled with salves and herb-cures. "I've been in this situation before. Blood mages move in and sooner or later the townsfolk start blaming every problem on you. Things go bad fast. You better go yourself. I don't think that you have long." 

Anders stayed. He didn't know what else to do.

A day later he returned to his little shop to find it wrecked. The geode was shattered, obscenities smeared over the blue stars on the wall. The tarot cards had been burned. Anders' little cat lay in the centre of the floor, throat cut and tabby fur smeared with thick dark blood. The last of Anders' tarot pack lay upon her motionless flanks. The magician stared up at Anders with pinprick black ink eyes.

Anders gathered the cat into his arms, stroking her blood-stained fur mechanically. He stared around at the debris of his neat little life and choked back tears.

"Healer?" a soft voice asked from the doorway.

Anders spun, his palms blazing with blue flame.  Temar drew back with a gasp, her eyes wide. Anders quenched the spell instantly. He expected her to run, but instead she went to duck inside. He stopped her with a gesture. Aside from the blood and the sharp fragments of the amethyst geode, who knew what dark spells might lurk beneath the rubble? "Don't come in," he told her. "It's not safe."

She nodded; a small tight gesture. "Templars are coming," she said. "My da told me to tell you. You better go."

"How'd you know?"

She gave him a disbelieving glance that was far too old for her."It's all over town. You gotta go, Anders."

"I can't," Anders retorted. He hadn't listened to marketplace gossip for days, but Temar's news had given him an idea. It was an idea he didn't allow himself to think too hard about. "Or maybe I can."

Temar shrugged. "You gotta go," she said again, and ran.

Anders cradled the dead cat in his arms and watched her go. By the time he turned back into the shop he had made up his mind. He spent a day cleaning the place, carefully scrubbing the obscenities from the walls and sweeping away the smashed crystal and charred tarot cards. He burned his bedroll in a field outside the city and gave away the furniture to whoever wanted it. One way or another, he guessed he would not be coming back.

Once the shop's bare walls had been scrubbed spotless Anders took the little cat outside and buried her in a clearing outside the city gates. When he was done he put on his ridiculous feathered coat, drew the curtain across the shop door and went to find the Templars.

 


	5. Chapter Five

Chapter Five:

It was easy to predict what route the Templars would take into town. There was only one main road from the Tower to Easthill.  Anders set out along it at midday. He saw the glint of sun on armour upon the horizon just as the shadows shortened towards evening.

By the time Anders was close enough to identify the three trudging figures as Templars it was already too late to turn back. There was a way stone by the road. Anders sat down upon it and waited for the Templars to approach. They wore full armour and moved much more quickly in the heavy mail than Anders would ever have managed. Swords and shields were slung across their back. Sabatons clanked on their feet. Anders felt very vulnerable. He reminded himself that a mage was never unarmed, crossed his arms across his chest and waited for the Templars to arrive.

He didn't have to wait long. The Templars had probably seen Anders before he'd even noticed them. They unsheathed their swords as they approached, fanning out to trap Anders in a loose net of Templar steel. Their faces were grim. Anders guessed they'd found the Templar bodies that Irion had left desecrated in the clearing.

 _I should have buried them,_ he thought. _Or at least said a prayer_.

"Don't move!" one of them shouted.

Anders nodded. He stood with his hands outstretched, keeping his eyes on two of the Templars while the third circled behind him. He turned his head to keep the woman in view. She paused as he caught her eye and raised her sword ready to gut him the moment he cast.

Anders sighed. "You don't need to worry. I'm not going to fight." He held both his hands higher and remembered too late that it was not the most unthreatening gesture for a mage to make."You don't need to be afraid of me. I'm only a healer."

"We're not afraid of you." the woman snapped. " _You_ should be afraid of _us_."

Anders swallowed. "I-I need your help."

"That's a first," one of the other Templars said. He chuckled behind his helm. "Never heard that one before."

The woman shot him an irritated glance. "Silence, Ser Lewis," she said, turning to Anders. "Silence, apostate. We'll help by bringing you to justice."

"No!" Anders protested. Justice to the Templars to often meant the sharp blade of a sword.  He chose his words carefully. "It's true that I left Calenhad, but I'm just an apprentice. I know where there's another mage- a true maleficar." He twisted again as the woman tried to get behind him, turning to face the Templars one by one until he felt that they were stuck in some nightmare merry-go-round.  "His name is Irion- a mage of Starkhaven. You've got to stop him. He's going to hurt people."

"We know all about the blood mage." the woman said, watching Anders carefully across the high bridge of her twice-broken nose. "That's why we're here. We found the bodies."

Anders sighed. He had hoped to avoid the subject of the dead Templars. "Then you know exactly what he's capable of."

He knew that he'd made a mistake as soon as the words left his mouth. The last Templar, the youngest and the only one of the three who hadn't already spoken, asked "How do you know about our dead?"

"That's a very good question," the broken-nosed woman said. "One with a very simple answer."

"Do I _look_ like a blood mage?" Anders pushed up the sleeves of his coat. His arms were pale and slightly freckled. "See? No scars."

The Templars inspected his arms suspiciously. The woman frowned. "Maybe you're no blood mage," she said, glaring at Anders over the rim of her shield, "but you're still a mage. And we're all still Templars. Now get on your fucking knees and don't even think of using magic, and _maybe_ we'll listen to what you have to say."

Ander swallowed. The sword blades levelled at him looked very sharp. The three Templars were a daunting prospect even without their blades. "Maybe isn't good enough," he said, leaning against the way stone to support his suddenly-weak knees and willing his voice not to shake. "I need you to go after him. I can tell you where he is. Andraste's sweet arse, I'll even help! Drag me back to the Circle in chains; make me flaming Tranquil if you want to. But you _have_ to listen."

"Don't blaspheme," the woman said sharply. "We don't _have_ to do anything." She gestured to the youngest Templar. "Ser Percival, the manacles." 

Ser Percival rested his sword on the ground and dug into his pack. He pulled out a handful of ensorcelled chains and handed them to his commander. "Are you sure he's a mage?" he said doubtfully regarding Anders with frank cynicism. "He could just be crazy."

"Oh, he's a mage," The woman took the chains from Percival and held them out to Anders. "Put these on. Then we'll talk."

Anders winced. He could feel the Fade dulling around the ensorcelled metal."That's not necessary."

"It is extremely necessary," she said. "No chains, no deal."

"What happens then?"

"Well, if you don't wear them, we'll brand you an apostate," she said seriously. "And then we'll kill you. Make your choice." 

"I said I'll help you, just don't-" Anders sighed. He'd have more chance arguing with the chains themselves than with the Templars.  He sighed again. "You don't know what it's like. I can't touch the Fade wearing those."

"That is the _point_ ," the commander said slowly, as if explaining doctrine to a child. "Now put them on.

Anders gritted his teeth and held out his hands. The Templar woman clasped the shackles around Anders' wrists and locked them with a click. Anders flexed his fingers, feeling the weight, and wondered what he had done in some previous life to be cursed with the amount of shit he found in this one.

The Templar smiled coldly. "Name and circle," she said, "and keep it short."

 "They call me Anders," he told her. "I'm from the Lake Calenhad Circle."

"How long have you been out?"

"Nearly six months," he said.

She sheathed her sword. "That's a long time. What _are_ we going to do with you?"

It was clearly a rhetorical question, so Anders didn't answer, but the youngest Templar, Ser Percival, did.  "Ser Jessamyn, we should return at once to the Circle," he said earnestly. "He could be the blood mage we're looking for. This could all be a trick."

The woman turned to their companion. "I agree. Ser Lewis, what do you think?"

Ser Lewis wrenched at his helm, revealing a pleasant, middle aged and undeniably aristocratic face. He sheathed his sword and scratched at his badger-striped beard with one gauntleted hand. "We all saw the bodies. That was blood magic if ever I saw any. Do you think _he_ did that?" He looked down his long nose at Anders. "He's only an apprentice."

Ser Jessamyn nodded. "Yet there's one thing I don't understand." She scowled at Anders. "Why approach us? Why didn't you just _run_? It's what you mages are good at, isn't it? I've never had anybody turn _himself_ in before."

Anders swallowed and wondered whether or not to tell the truth. He decided it was best to be as honest as he could. "The man you want is haunted by demons," he told them all. "Not possessed yet, but he's surely close. When he learned that I was a mage he tried to use me as a distraction. It-it didn't really work."

The Templar woman scowled. "What do you mean, mage?"

"He dragged me into the Fade and tried to enslave me to a demon," Anders said bluntly. "When it didn't work he told me that he'd come back for me and if I left he'd harm the townspeople. Use them for blood sacrifices. So I stayed." He swallowed, remembering that blood-soaked clearing. "What else could I do?"

"A mage who cares about something other than himself," said Ser Lewis. "What a rarity."

The sarcasm sparked something to life that had lain dormant inside Anders since he had entered the Fade for the first time."Care? Maferath's name, I'm a _healer_. I cared for them all. They were my _friends_."

The Templars exchanged a glance. "Mage sympathisers," said Ser Jessamyn. She spoke the words in the same tone as _scum_.

"They weren't!" Anders protested. He knew exactly what the Templars did to villagers suspected of harbouring mages. It was neither pretty nor pleasant. "They didn't know!"

"Don't lie to us," she snapped. "You were hiding there, weren't you? Somebody must have helped you. Somebody must have known."

"Does it matter?" Anders shouted. The Templar woman stepped back. Her eyes narrowed and her hand dropped to her sword-hilt as Anders continued, but she did not strike. "You are the swords of Andraste, isn't that how it goes?  Bound to protect the people of Thedas from the ravages of foul magic? There's a blood mage on the loose. You are those people's last chance. You have to help them."

"Your ignorance of holy scripture is astounding," Ser Jessamyn said. She gave Anders a long look that suggested he'd been weighed in the balance and found wanting. "I would expect no less from a mage."

Ser Lewis coughed. "Your orders, Ser?"

"It's late," she said. "We'll camp near here and visit the town in the morning for reconnaissance. After that-well, we'll see." Her tone of voice did not bode well for Anders if he was lying. "We _will_ return to Calenhad, mage. Make no doubt of that."

Ser Lewis and Ser Percival nodded, and the ragged little party set off with Anders uncomfortably wedged at the centre, like a hard nut in a pastry. The journey to the campsite Ser Jessamyn had chosen was not pleasant for him, but neither was it painful. He had expected a certain amount of brutality, and braced himself for it-most Templars saw no reason why they should put themselves in danger for ungrateful mages, and a certain amount of righteous anger was to be expected upon capture. But the Templars didn't touch him.

Ser Jessamyn chose a campsite on a raised piece of land by a stream. She sent the other Templars out to scout. Anders waited, encouraged by this evidence of professionalism. These Templars, he thought, might have more chance against the blood mage. They seemed to know what they were doing.

He was less reassured when Ser Percival returned and Ser Jessamyn ordered him to search Anders for weapons. No Templars had ever bothered before. If they had, he might not have been able to escape so many times. A mage's weapons were his hands and his connection to the Fade. With those abilities curtailed by spell-wrought chains, the mage was effectively helpless. Most Templars tended to forget that mages had resources other than magic.

"Get off me," he said, jerking away as Ser Percival approached and began to pat him down roughly. The Templar had obviously done this before, and it showed. Ser Percival kept up a running stream of constant chatter as he searched Anders, even ruffling his fingers through the feathers on the collar of his ridiculous coat. Anders wrenched his head away as Ser Percival reached up to run his hand through Anders' stubby ponytail, but it was too late. Ser Percival caught the lock pick Anders had tucked into his hair tie. He withdrew his hand, the slip of metal pincered between thumb and finger. He frowned at the pick and then at Anders. "What's this?"

Anders thought on his feet. "It's a traditional Anderfels hair ornament," he lied. "Not expensive, but of great, uh, sentimental value."

Ser Percival frowned. "Mages aren't allowed keepsakes. Commander," he shouted over his shoulder to Ser Jessamyn."I think you need to come have a look at this."

Ser Jessamyn came over to see what was going on. It was the precise situation Anders had hoped to avoid. He winced as Percival held out the half-diamond pick to Ser Jessamyn. The Templar commander, of course, knew exactly what it was. She took one look at the lock pick and punched Anders in the face.

It was a good blow, squarely centred with a good deal of force behind it. One moment Anders was standing next to Ser Percival, trying and failing to think of anything he could say that would defuse the situation. The next, he was on the ground with coloured stars floating in the corners of his eyes and a nose that felt part-way to broken.

"Good question," Ser Jessamyn said to Percival as cheap crystal beads scattered to the grass like rain. "It's a tool for picking locks. Escaping chains." She poked Anders with the toe of her armoured boot. "Is this a trick?"

Anders shook his head and winced. He blotted blood from his nose on the sleeve of his coat, chains clinking with the motion.

She scowled. "This is not a game, mage."

 "I never thought it was." Anders wiped his mouth and realised that he'd just managed to upgrade himself from an inconvenience to a possible threat. It had not been his plan.

"Get up," Ser Jessamyn ordered.

"Not if you're going to hit me again," Anders protested. Both the men had drawn steel, and Ser Jessamyn tapped her fingers on the hilt of her sword in a rhythm that suggested that she was running out of patience and Anders was running out of time. He hauled himself to his feet reluctantly and said "It's not what you think."

Ser Jessamyn's eyes narrowed to furious slits. "Keep talking," she ordered. The Templars watched Anders as if they expected him to grow horns and turn into an abomination right in front of their eyes. Maybe they were.

"Andraste's tits," he said wearily. "I don't want to go back to the Circle. Do you think I'd be stupid enough to hand myself in without an escape route?"

Jessamyn's eyes narrowed. "Yes," she said. She held up a mailed hand to forestall Anders' explanation. "Bear in mind before you speak again that your stupidity in my eyes has just increased tenfold. You're a trickster and a liar, like all mages. And you don't get to turn yourself in and then go free. It doesn't work like that. Mages are dangerous." She looked at Ser Lewis and Ser Percival. "We leave for Calenhad in the morning."

"What about the village?" Anders said desperately. "What about Easthill?"

 "The village will be safer without you," she snapped. "If a problem does arrive, then we'll deal with it once you're safely in the Circle. In Maferath's name, you're not even Harrowed yet. You're a prime candidate for possession and we're taking you back as soon as we can. I can't watch you all the time and fight a blood mage as well. You've just proved I can't trust you, and I'm not putting my men at risk."

Anders' hair fell in his face. He swiped it back with chained hands. "Consider just for a moment I might be telling the truth. Irion's still out there.  Promise me you'll kill him." 

The Commander looked uncertain for a fraction of a second. "We are not your sword, mage. Now shut your face. There's only one mage here I'm tempted to kill, and it's you if you won't be silent." 

 Anders could see that she meant it. He'd seen that dangerous look in Templar eyes before and knew what it meant. It meant that he'd pushed his luck as precisely as far as it would go and if he continued then he was going to get punched again.

He wasn't sure whether to be devastated or relieved. The ability to make decisions had been taken from him when the Templars fastened the chains around his wrists. They would keep him safe and return him to the Tower, which, while undeniably boring, was painstakingly free from demons and blood magic. Then he remembered that the townsfolk had no such protection. "But-" 

"Shut up or I'll gag you," snapped Ser Jessamyn.

Anders held his tongue until it was nearly dark. It was a personal record for him, but it was amazing what you could do with the right incentive. The Templars roasted meat over a small fire. Ser Percival brought Anders a skewer, although he slid the chunks of rabbit from the wooden spike before handing them to Anders.

The meat was warm and gloriously greasy, and when Anders had finished it he felt a bit more like himself.

It was full dark when Ser Percival came over and handed him a cup of water. He hunkered down beside him with a clanking of mail and tossed him a blanket. Anders expected him to leave at once, but he studied Anders like a page of scripture.

"You've escaped before," he said at last. It wasn't a question.

"Once or twice, yes," Anders admitted. He pulled the blanket towards him and decided that talking hurt his face.

"Did you use that lock pick every time?" asked Ser Percival. Anders tried to ignore him. It was much easier than ignoring Ser Jessamyn, because Ser Percival didn't look as if he could rip Anders' arms off and beat him to death with them at any moment.

"Why'd you flaming mages always have to run away?" Ser Percival asked. "Was life in the Tower that bad?"

"If it's so good, why would we want to?" Anders countered. He touched his face. It hurt. He squinted at Ser Percival's breastplate, trying to make out his reflection, but it was too dark.

"You didn't answer my question," said Percival. "Why'd you lot always make us chase you through the Maker-forsaken countryside? It's not like you have any real chance. We always find you eventually. We have your phylacteries, after all."

Anders' finger prodded a nerve. He winced, pausing in his careful exploration."Would you want to spend your life locked inside a tower?"

Percival snorted. "I'm a Calenhad Templar. It happens."

 "I didn't choose to be a mage," Anders pointed out.

"I didn't choose to be a Templar."

"How terrible for you."

Percival shrugged. "Life is hard. Whining never solves anything. There are worse places than the Circles."

"It's not just the Circles," Anders retorted. "It's the scripture. We're just mages. We're not _damned_."

"That's a matter of opinion," said Ser Percival."Magic exists to serve man, not to rule over him. You must have heard that before."

"Many times." Anders said. "But you know, it's all in the interpretation."

Ser Percival stared off into the trees past Anders' shoulder and scanned the dark for movement before his attention snapped suddenly back to Anders. "Tell the truth," he said. "Is there really a blood mage out there?"

Ander nodded glumly. "He's out there," he said.

Ser Percival cast a nervous look at the night sky. He collected the empty cup and returned to the fire and his companions. Anders felt very alone. Strange scuffling noises drifted from the darkness. The Templars talked in low voices around their fire. The night sounds did not seem to bother them, but they put Anders on edge. He wondered what was out there, and then realized that he almost certainly already knew. It made him feel no safer.

Anders walked to the very limit of his chains and pissed into the dark. He watched the forest for a while, but nothing appeared.  The Templars had already wrapped themselves in blankets by the fire and gone to sleep. One Templar stood on watch at the very edge of the clearing, but Anders could not tell which of them it was.

He settled back into his chains. The forest floor was covered with a soft layer of pine needles which made it comfortable enough, but it was hard to settle with his movement restricted by the Templar manacles. He pulled the blanket over him to keep warm and stared at the guttering flames. The long dreadful nights were the worst part. Anders had not dared to sleep since his meeting with Irion. Sleep meant entering the Fade, and the Fade terrified him beyond words. Exhaustion wrapped around him like a familiar coat as he fought to keep his eyes open. 

It was very late when he roused himself to look around. The three Templars were motionless rolls of blanket. The moon rode low in the sky and striped the forest floor with the skeleton shadows of tree. There was no sign of a guard.

Something moved in the shadows. Anders scrabbled to his feet, chains forgotten in a wave of panic that peaked as a figure crossed the clearing towards him. The abomination was nearly seven feet tall. Its right eye stared balefully at Anders from a mask of twisted, livid flesh. Its left eye was obscured beneath a flap of veined and ribbed skin. Its head and torso pulsed beneath the weight of an opalescent mound of tissue which extended down its shoulders to its upper arms. It hissed and reached for Anders with arms like ropes of naked muscle.

He screamed.

 


	6. Chapter Six

Chapter Six.

Anders stood rooted to the ground, unable to run, unable to think. He slid one foot backwards and realized with a rush that the floor beneath him was stone flags rather than soil, the shadows of trees replaced by stone-carved pillars, the moon with a tantalising glimpse of the same dark city he had seen from the windows of the Fade's great hall.

It should have made him feel better. It didn't. Dreams had power, and the dreams of mages had more, and all that this current dream was saying to him was that he was truly and comprehensibly fucked.

The abomination reached out and gripped Anders' jaw. Its palm writhed like worms against his throat. He clawed at its arm with his fingers, tearing bloodless chunks of flesh away like soft bark, but the creature did not loosen its hold. 

He looked into its single bloodshot eye and saw his own future staring back. Anders could think of few things worse than being trapped in a loathsome, decaying body, while a malevolent and nameless entity moved him like a puppet.

He screamed again, and went on screaming. It wasn't until somebody kicked him in the ribs that he realised he was dreaming. 

"What in Andraste's name?"Somebody cursed.

"Shut him up!" A different voice: female and exasperated. Ser Jessamyn was apparently not a morning person.

Anders raised one hand to shade his eyes against the glint of dawn sunlight off armour. The three Templars crowded around him. Ser Percival and Ser Lewis both had their swords drawn. Ser Jessamyn didn't, but she looked a hair's breadth away from strangling Anders with her bare hands.

"The demons!" Anders choked.

"Where? Here?" Ser Jessamyn drew her blade in an instant. She looked around as if she expected demons to materialise in the clearing at any moment.

Anders shook his head. "A dream. It was just a dream."

"You're a mage," Ser Lewis said dismissively. "That's practically to be expected."

"Not like this." Anders protested.

Ser Jessamyn narrowed her eyes and glared at him. "Bloody mages," she said at last, and turned away.

Ser Percival edged closer. "What is it?" he asked nervously. "What did you see?"

Anders had no intention of telling him the truth. Mages couldn't be possessed without touching the Fade, and _that_ was theoretically impossible while wearing the sort of sorcerous manacles Ser Jessamyn had chained him with. But the Templars didn't look as if they were in a mood to hear about abominations. "Blood and fire," he said instead.

Ser Percival gulped. Ser Lewis cuffed Anders and frowned. "Stop frightening the lad." He turned to Ser Percival. "Mages lie-and this one more than most. Don't take any notice. Go pack up the camp."

Anders slumped against the tree while the Templars buried the glowing embers of the fire with handfuls of earth and rolled up their bedding into neat little packs. He felt like a particularly cumbersome piece of baggage himself. It hadn't exactly been his plan.

Anders' plan had been simple. He'd betray Irion to the Templars, watch as they cut the blood mage down, and slip away into the night before they had gotten too close to the Tower at Calenhad. Instead Irion was still on the loose, and Anders was a helpless prisoner with no way of escape.

He sighed and watched the Templars strike the camp. When the only sign the campsite had ever been there was a small patch of flattened dirt Ser Jessamyn came over and unchained Anders from the tree with a small iron key. "Don't even think about escaping," she said. "The way I see it, you're a hairs-breath away from becoming an abomination yourself. If you run it won't go well."

Anders rubbed his wrists. "I appreciate the warning," he said.

She gave him a hard look."You'd better."

"You don't like me, do you?"

"It's not my job to like or dislike you. It's my job to return you to the Circle."

"That's a shame. I think we really have something here. It's a long walk to the tower. You casting me smouldering glances, me in manacles-" he gestured. "All sorts of things could happen."

"Go on-" She was watching him with an odd mixture of fascination and amusement. Possibly none of her captives had tried to flirt with her before.

"It's your eyes. The cold steel really brings them out-"

"Pleasant though your compliments are, I think that you should stop right there." Ser Jessamyn said. That look on her face, the one that said Anders was dredging the very limits of her patience, was back again. "We have to go. There's a long walk ahead of us."

The day's walk was exactly as tough as Anders had expected but to his relief no worse. He followed the Templars back towards the high road. They spent the rest of the day walking north through increasingly rolling countryside. Lake Calenhad was four or five days' hard march away, and Ser Jessamyn set a hard pace.  Anders lost even the little freedoms he had enjoyed in the Circle tower. He walked where the Templars led, rested when they let him and ate whatever they gave him. It was almost a relief.

"In my next life I won't be a mage," he said after a while, more to himself than to any of the Templars. "I'll be a noble, or a knight."

Ser Percival looked around. "Do you really think that everyone apart from mages has the ability to choose their future?"

"Well, yes." Anders said.

"How much control do you think the son of a farmer has over whether he'll become a ploughman like his dad? It's the Chantry or the Templars, and even the Templars have to provide their own armour. That limits us to well born bastards and nobles' second sons." Ser Percival sighed. "I could tell you stories. But you probably wouldn't listen."

"Folk can change their fates," Anders said stubbornly. "I've seen it."

"That's the exception, not the rule," Ser Percival said.

"Then it's only slaves and mages who have no choice at all." Anders retorted.

"Mages are _not_ slaves." Ser Jessamyn snapped. She had returned to the party near-silently while they argued, splashed with blood that wasn't hers and more than a little annoyed.

"To debate with an apostate is to invite corruption." Ser Lewis said to Ser Percival. "You'll learn."

"I hope not," said Anders.

"Sers, please be silent." ordered Ser Jessamyn. "Mage, hold your tongue. Neither of you are about to change each other's opinions, and I have better things to do than listen to both of you argue."

"What things?" asked Anders. The comment earned him a smack around the ear and put paid to conversation for the day.

They camped at sunset in a stand of birch trees atop a small hill just out of sight of the road. This time Anders knew enough of the Templars' routine to know what to expect. Packs unpacked, fire lit, renegade mage chained to a tree-it was all in a day's work.

"How far to Calenhad?" he asked Ser Percival, when the young Templar came close enough.

Ser Percival looked startled. "How far? Three, four days, maybe, if the weather holds and if we're lucky."

Anders wondered exactly how far Irion would bother to chase him before the blood mage finally gave up. "No reason."

 _Of course_ , he thought, _maybe the bastard's given up already and decided to bleed half Easthill dry instead. Three days to the Circle, three days back, and that's if they send men out right away. It could be weeks._

 _That's far too long..._  

"Can't we speed up?" he asked the Templars.

Ser Percival looked even more surprised. "Why?"

"Maybe I'm feeling homesick," Anders said.

Ser Percival shook his head. "I find that hard to believe."

"Stop fraternising with the mage," Ser Lewis called from the opposite side of the clearing. Ser Percival edged away from Anders as if he was a snake rather than a bedraggled and inexperienced apostate. Of course, Templar doctrine taught that it was only a matter of time before Anders became a horrible demon, _if he wasn't one already_ , as some of the Templars who had been the subject of some of Anders' more inventive pranks over the years had muttered behind First Enchanter Irving's back.

Anders sighed. He turned from the Templars and reached out for the Veil for the innumerable time since his capture. The magical shackles he wore prevented him breaking the Veil or drawing power through it. He couldn't use magic, and he had no intention of entering the Fade, but the mental exercises were reassuringly familiar. He thought that the Templars, with their lyrium augmented senses, might sense him despite the ensorcelled chains. But either they were distracted making camp or the lyrium they drank didn't work that way, because nobody stopped Anders as he cupped his hands and concentrated.

To his surprise, the Veil here was thin, fragile as a soap bubble. The Fade pressed closely to the waking world. Anders had not expected as such. The Veil was thinnest in places of magical power; certain cities, certain buildings, ancient sites where years of spells or worship had weakened the barrier between the two worlds sufficiently enough for mages to draw their magic more easily.

He tried to cast a simple fireball, but all that happened was that his head began to ache. The chains weighed heavily on his wrists. Anders drew back from the Fade, wincing, and as he did so he caught a collection of impressions; faint as figures pressed the other side of a pane of window-glass.

He smelt the stink of dripping gore and stood in the shadow of abominations whose skin writhed and pulsed beneath the weight of tortured and possessed tissue.  The apparitions' wrenched open jaws long locked by strands of mutant flesh and spoke to Anders in voices like the closing of black iron gates.

I AM HERE, they said. I AM COMING.

Anders yelped. "Shit!" He wrenched himself free of the Fade, grateful for the first time for his magical shackles.  The Templars' heads snapped around. Anders saw each knight reach for their sword.

"You have to go!" he shouted across to them. "We have to leave! Right now! He's coming! He's really coming!"

Ser Jessamyn got to her feet with a crash of armour and crossed the clearing towards Anders. "Something the matter, mage?" she said, frowning as Anders scrambled to his feet and held out the lock that chained him to the particularly sturdy oak tree that the Templars had chosen for the night.

Anders nodded. His headache intensified. He massaged his temples futilely with the fingers of his right hand as he spoke. "The blood mage Irion is coming. He'll find me and kill you all. We've got to go."

She looked cynical. "No. We're staying right here."

Anders moaned. "I thought you'd say that."

Ser Jessamyn tapped her sword-flat rhythmically against her greaves with a tinny chime. "How'd you know?"

Anders was about to say _a demon told me_ , but realised just in time that that really wasn't a good idea. He shook his head. "It doesn't matter how I know. What matters is it's true."

Ser Jessamyn looked around at the empty wilderness that surrounded them. "Where would you suggest we run to? The Circle is still several days' march away. This is a defensible position, and hard to find from the road. Even if what you say is true-which, by the way, I highly doubt-we are not going anywhere."

"You don't understand!" Anders thrust the chains at her again, shaking his head as she drew back from him and made to rejoin her fellows around the campfire. "He has my phylactery."

She halted, eyes narrowing. "That's not possible."

"He made another one!" Anders said.

Ser Lewis had come to join them. "That's impossible," he repeated.

Ser Jessamyn shook her head. "How?"

"Same way it's always done." Anders was not about to waste time.  "He took my blood and told me he could use it to find out where I am. And if he's coming for me, then he's going to find you, too. And he's coming. Trust me, he's coming."

"Then let him come," said Ser Jessamyn.

Ser Lewis gave Anders a hard look. "How do you _know_?"

"I can sense it," Anders said. He held up his chained hands. "Mage, remember?"

Ser Lewis scowled. "Templar," he said, "and I can't feel a thing."

There was a startled yelp from the clearing. Mage and Templars spun as Ser Percival leapt back from the campfire. The blaze flared up three feet in a fountain of blue flame and guttered out. A sudden wind caught the Templars' fringed sashes and blew the clouds from the setting sun. The light gleamed blood scarlet and gave the Templars' faces an ugly cast. The birch trees cast long shadows over the clearing; their bark stained a faint pink by the fading sunlight.

"What is happening?" Ser Jessamyn asked Anders through her teeth.

Ser Lewis spat. "Isn't it obvious? He's working with them."

Anders held out his shackled hands. "Andraste's arse! I'm chained, remember. I _can't work magic_. If I had something to do with this, then why am I so damn scared?"  He looked from one face to another, cringing slightly at the Templars' set faces and bared swords, but he was so obviously terrified that even Ser Lewis turned away.

"Sers," Ser Jessamyn said. "I think the apostate is right. I smell blood magic. The bastard's here." 

Ser Lewis spat. "Bloody mages. Bloody _blood_ mages, damn their eyes."

Ser Jessamyn drew her sword and tossed the scabbard away, proving to Anders at least that she had the same finely developed sense of drama as the blood mage they were hunting.  The rising wind caught the leather and carried the scabbard into the trees and out of sight. "We can deal with this monster."

Anders did not envy the Templars their fight, but he wished he had their confidence. Or, failing that, their armour. He rattled his manacles. "Andraste's arse, I'm helpless here." His voice rose helplessly as the Templars went over to join Ser Percival by the fire. "Let me go!"

Ser Jessamyn scowled as she turned back. "Not a chance."

"You can't leave me here!"

"We can and we will. Now shut up. We've got a battle to fight."

"At least give me a sword!" Anders protested.

Ser Jessamyn pulled her visor down. "Stay _here_ ," she snapped, voice muffled by the metal.

Anders held up his hands. "Did you forget about the chains?

The Templar captain sniffed. "Ser Lewis, guard him-" 

There was a piercing scream.

Both Templars' heads snapped around towards Ser Percival. There was no sign of the young Templar. The campfire flames had died down to a sullen crimson glow. The wind whispered in the trees as Ser Percival screamed again.

"Leave the mage." Ser Lewis raised his sword. "Let's go and get the boy." He broke into a ponderous jog and vanished into the shadows as another howl came from the trees.

Ser Jessamyn cursed. "Stay here," she snapped again to Anders, and followed Ser Lewis into the darkness.

Anders shrank back into the scanty shelter of the trees. He rotated the manacles around his wrists, but they were far too tight for him to slip out and far too strong for him to break. Ser Jessamyn had been right. He wasn't going anywhere.

He winced as another scream came from the clearing.  He knew from his previous experience with Irion that the blood mage enjoyed his work. He'd take his time dismantling the Templars, piece by piece, and limb from limb. And then he'd come for Anders.

Anders had no intention of being around when Irion arrived. He pulled his arms close to his chest and tugged on the chains. They slid around the tree bark and bit into his wrists painfully, but the oak Ser Jessamyn had chosen was far too stout. Anders glanced up into the branches to see if he could somehow work the chains up over the trunk, but the tree was as high as a house. There would be no escaping that way, and even if he did, he'd still be shackled.

Anders looked around for a rock to force the lock open. He found nothing but tree roots and sandy soil.  He found a branch, which snapped as soon as he tried it. As he searched for another he realised that his hands were shaking. The air smelt of fear and blood.

A whispered groan came from the darkness. Anders' head snapped up like a hound's. "Who's there?" he asked the night.

Ser Percival shuffled out of the darkness. His head was bare, his eyes were wide and black and his skin was paper-white. His breastplate was horribly dented, scarred with impossible forces that had crumpled steel like paper. Anders could only imagine what damage had been done to the flesh inside.

"Ser Percival?" he asked tentatively.

The Templar coughed and dropped his sword. Blood trickled from the joints in his armour. He fell to his knees in a clash of mail, took one last gasping breath, and toppled onto his face.

Anders moved towards the fallen man instinctively. His chains brought him up short. Percival had fallen just too far away. He shuffled forwards on his arse and stretched out his leg as far as he could. The tip of his boot nudged the Templar's hand. Ser Percival did not move. His hand flopped like a dead fish.

Anders took a closer look at Ser Percival's face and decided that the man was probably dead.  He drew back, wondering what to do, and his ankle knocked painfully against the hilt of Percival's sword. Anders reached out with his foot. He hooked his heel behind the cross-piece on the hilt on the sword and pulled it towards him, trying not to lose the sword among the underbrush or slash his leg open with the blade. To his surprise his plan worked. He felt a little better once he held a weapon in his hands. The sword was standard Templar issue, a heavy double-handed blade with a cloth-wrapped hilt. Anders had no idea how to use it. He slid down against the tree with his hands on the blood-soaked hilt. The blade rested uneasily against his thighs as he stared at Ser Percival's body.

Ser Percival, who –Anders realised- still had his lock-pick.

Anders felt a sudden surge of hope. True, he had no idea how to use a sword, but he understood escaping just fine. He'd watched Percival slip the pick into his pouch. The Templar probably still had it. All Anders had to do was reach him. 

Anders laid the Templar's cross-hilted sword down carefully beside him and began to wriggle out of his shirt. When he had shrugged the worn cotton over his head and worked it as far as he could over his hands, he reversed the sword and gripped its blade gingerly through the thin pad of his shirt. He extended the sword as far as he could and snagged Percival's sash on the second try. He worked the hilt between the layers of cloth, gripped the blade and pulled.

Ser Percival did not move.

Anders cursed. He slid down the tree, using the curved roots as a lever, and tried again. This time the Templar inched forwards, towards Anders. His fingers stung as the keen blade slit the cloth. Anders tugged, and the dead man's foot slid within reach.

Anders dropped the blade and caught Ser Percival's shoe. He pulled again, yanking the body towards him inch by agonising inch. When the Templar was close enough Anders braced himself against the tree and rolled the body towards him with one hand on the man's shoulder and one on his hip. He pressed bleeding fingers to Ser Percival's throat and found no pulse. The young Templar's mouth was half-open, his eyes rolled back and slitted white.

Anders closed the dead man's eyelids before rifling his pockets. He found a small pouch of coin, a knife and a few flasks of lyrium. The lock pick was right at the bottom of the pouch, wrapped in a small twist of paper.  Anders set the pick aside. He pulled his shredded shirt back on and examined his hands. The damage wasn't as bad as he had expected. There was a shallow slash that ran horizontally across his palm, and another, smaller cut that crossed the first joint of all four of his fingers. He could still move all his fingers. It could, he thought, have been much worse.

He staunched the blood on his shirt-tail and went to work on the locks. A few rakes and a twist later and Anders was free.

He crouched with his back to the tree, rubbed his wrists and considered the options open to him. There were only two roads he could see. He could take the lyrium and the money, his lock pick and the knife and see how far he could get before the blood mage or the Templars found him. He had a suspicion it wouldn't be far. Both factions could find Anders quickly if they wanted to, and the only way he could see to stop them was by spilling his own blood before they could use it to find him. Dying had never been Anders' plan.

So he could run, or he could join the Templars and fight the blood mage himself.

 _Of course,_ Anders thought wryly, _that went so well the first time_.

He hadn't planned it like this. He'd hoped that the Templars would slaughter Irion offhand. Only from the state of Percival's body, it didn't look like that would be happening any time soon. He supposed that there was a chance that the Templars had wounded Irion badly enough that he'd die easily, but it was a small hope, and faint.

So could run and die, or fight and die. It wasn't much of a choice.

Anders whispered a prayer to a god that he didn't believe in and who he was almost certain didn't believe in him. He put the lyrium and the coins back into Ser Percival's pouch and tied it to his own belt, next to the knife. He tucked the lock pick back into his hair, left the sword by Ser Percival's side and picked up a short length of ensorcelled chain.

Freedom was a fine thing, and it made all sorts of choices possible.

Anders took a deep breath, and chose to fight.

 


	7. Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven.

He followed the sounds of the fight into the forest. It was full dark by now. The scarlet sunset had faded into deep velvety blackness. If it hadn't been for the pale bark of the birch trees, Anders would have walked right into a tree trunk and knocked himself silly within moments of entering the forest. He called up a magelight as he crept deeper into the trees. Somebody gasped, exhaling with harsh, painful breaths that sounded as if the wood itself was pleading for release. Anders walked faster. He didn't like the Templars, but he'd be damned if he would let them purchase time with their blood.

Of course, according to the Templars, he was damned already...

The indigo glow of his magelight picked out the gleam of blood on steel, and he knew then that he'd found them. Irion held Ser Jessamyn up against a tree by her throat. The Templar woman's visor had been ripped away to expose her face. One of her gauntlets was missing, but her armour was mostly intact. She hadn't been crushed like Ser Percival. She was alive. Anders glanced around for Ser Lewis, but there was no sign of the older Templar.

"Ah, Anders," Irion said without looking away from Ser Jessamyn. "So nice of you to join us. I'll only be a minute."

Ser Jessamyn's eyes widened in surprise. "You-" she gasped as Anders draped the ensorcelled chains across a branch. He felt the Veil immediately thin as soon as he released the magical metal. Ser Jessamyn was far too far gone to notice. She spat accusations and curses in Anders' face, but her voice thinned and then choked into silence as Irion gripped her more firmly around the throat.

Anders avoided her accusing, bulging eyes. "Stop it," he commanded Irion.

The blood mage laughed. He raised his arm an inch, forcing Ser Jessamyn up onto the tips of her sabatons. "What do you care?" he snapped. "You're a mage. They're Templars. You should be glad. We've been through this before."

"Maybe us mages should deal with our own abominations," Anders said. The line didn't sound quite as good as it had in his head, but it was, he thought, a start. "I challenge you to a duel."

Irion laughed. "You're going to fight me?"

"Almost certainly," Anders confirmed. His breath caught in his throat as Irion dropped Ser Jessamyn unceremoniously to the ground. The Templar woman crumpled, gasping, as Irion advanced on Anders with his hands blazing fire.

"Who do you think is going to win?" the blood mage demanded. He gestured at Anders' right hand. Flame danced, and Anders caught a glimpse of his own long-nosed, sharp-faced shadow streaming away on the ground.  "You're already bleeding."

Anders glanced down at the shallow slashes made by Ser Percival's sword blade. The cuts opened one by one, leaking blood. He flexed his hand and gritted his teeth as the Fade pushed closer, the Veil thinning as countless demons pushed against it, whispering to Anders, offering him power, wealth, revenge...anything he wanted. All he had to do was agree.

Anders shook his head and picked up the chains. The Fade abruptly receded, and Anders took his first deep breath in what seemed like a lifetime.

Irion grinned. "Don't reject them," he said. "You'll never learn anything that way. Embrace the Fade. Don't fight it."

"Embrace this," Anders said, and tossed the ensorcelled Templar chains to the magician.

Irion caught them automatically. The spells that enchanted the metal didn't do more than slow him for a second, but a second was enough. Mage robes were not armoured. Anders yanked Ser Percival's dagger from his belt and punched it into the blood mage's belly.

It wasn't a skilled blow, but it didn't have to be. Irion was close enough that Anders didn't even have to aim. He pulled the blade out and stabbed the mage again. He struck higher; aiming for the heart, but the dagger caught on a rib and stuck fast. The hilt slid from Anders' blood soaked hands. He backed away.

Irion coughed and bent double. He looked up at Anders and smiled through blood-stained teeth as he yanked the dagger from his chest.  He straightened, grimacing, and dropped the knife to the ground.

"You don't kill mages like that," he told Anders. "Let me show you how it's done."

Anders didn't wait to find out. He reached for the Veil and cast. Flame erupted from his hands and broke like a wave against Irion's protective shield. Anders tried lightning with much the same effect. Frost spells only chilled his fingers. A force wave that should have swept Irion from his feet barely ruffled the blood mage's hair.

Irion laughed. "You'll have to try much harder," he said. His laugh died to a chuckle as he spread his hands. "My turn."

An explosion of gore burst from Irion's palms hands. Anders attempted to block the magic with a spell of his own but his futile attempts at attacking had drained his mana to the dregs. His world went white, then red. His pulse thundered in his ears. Each beat of his heart fuelled a fresh burst of agony as the blood boiled in his veins.  His muscles cramped, knotting one by one until Anders was sure he must be wound tighter than an Anderfels acrobat. Over his throbbing pulse he heard Irion say, "Blood Wound's a useful little spell, isn't it? I used it on those Templars." He laughed again. "And then I ripped them to shreds, and left them for the crows."

Anders could not reply. He couldn't even breathe. The spell took him past caring, past consciousness, past anything but simply existing. He had no idea how long it was before the agony lessened enough for him to stand. It felt like hours, but it was probably only minutes. _Seconds, even._ Ser Jessamyn lay where she had fallen against the silver birch.  The shadows hadn't moved an inch.

 

Anders heard Irion chuckling. He could sense the blood mage's magic, far stronger than his own, like a great wave poised to crash down over him. He was out of magic, out of ideas, and out of luck. As he went to retreat he realised that he could hardly even walk. Escape, it seemed, was not an option. But he was still alive. He still had choices. Choices, some coins, a lock pick, and some lyrium.

_Lyrium._

Anders moved his hand to his belt, muscles screaming, and dug in Ser Percival's pouch. He pulled out a bottle of lyrium and struggled with the cork with stiff fingers. Irion watched him with amusement.

 "Go on," he said, inviting Anders to drink with a courtly wave of his hand. "Go into the Fade. Sell yourself to the demons. I'm sure they'll enjoy the experience." He laughed. "More than you will, anyway."

Anders drank.

The lyrium tasted no better the second time around. He gasped at the inrush of power and entered the Fade. He saw the black city and the demons that waited there. There were hundreds; all wanting, all desperate, all hungry. They writhed and snapped at each other, tearing their weaker colleagues to shreds in their hunger to feed. Their twisted, writhing figures were dark and numerous as the night sky, but in the mass Anders saw occasional pinpoints of white light, like stars.

Anders' Circle lessons had taught him that there were two sorts of creature in the Fade. Demons and spirits. Demons were vessels of emotion and greed. The motivations of spirits were much more difficult to explain. They were more benevolent than demons, but that didn't mean that they were _safe_. Given any choice, Anders would not have attempted a deal with either, but after his experiences with the demons of the Fade he thought that a spirit bargain would be a much safer bet.

Anders fought his way through the crowd of demons towards the faintest flicker of light. The lyrium filled him with power and drew the eyes of every demon to him. Desperation lent him strength. He immersed himself willingly, charring demon skin to ash with fireballs and sending twisted corpses flying with barriers of immovable force. Demons evaded his defences despite Anders' best efforts. They darted in, raking his skin with sharp talons even as they whispered promises of revenge and riches in his ears.

It seemed like an eternity before he reached the closest spirit. Perhaps it was. Time had no meaning in the Fade. The demons that fell under Anders' spells left no trace of their existence, but he was sure that he had climbed a mountain of corpses before he got close enough for the spirit to hear him gasp "I need your help."

The spirit turned its head and regarded Anders with a cool and alien gaze. It was female in form, shapely and slender. It wore pale flowing robes and its diamond eyes were very cold. The demons kept their distance.

 _Are you distressed_? The spirit enquired.

Anders nodded wordlessly. He was spent. His shirt was streaked with blood and earth. His hair had escaped from its tail and hung tangled around his face. "I need your help," he said again. "Please, tell me your nature."

The spirit's robes were flawless white. Pale bangles glimmered on its arms as it touched an insubstantial finger to its pointed chin and looked down its long nose at Anders. _I crush and destroy the pain of others_ , it said.  _Thus I am named compassion.  I am called compassion because I shelter and embrace the distressed._ It gave Anders a glance that managed to encompass both sympathy and disdain. _Such as yourself._

"You're a spirit of compassion?"

 _I am that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others_ said the spirit. _What will you give?_

Anders would have preferred a more martial spirit, but he was in no position to argue. "Whatever you want," he said.

 _That is a poor trade_ , said the spirit. _A poor trade and unwise. Choose another._

Anders raised a shaking hand to point back at Irion but realised just in time that the other mage was still outside the Fade and hence invisible to the spirit. "There's a blood mage," he said, wondering with every word whether the spirit could even grasp what he was saying.  "You speak of pain and suffering-well, he's killed many people. Hurt others.  He'll hurt more, if he lives. But I can't fight him alone. He's too strong. I need help. You say that you're compassion." He looked at the spirit's face and saw only a visage smooth as marble. "Help me fight him."

 _What will you give?_ The spirit asked again.

"You can take him," Anders said."He's a powerful mage. You can have his power. Take all of him. Take compassion on his victims. Please."

 _Then I accept,_ said the spirit.

Anders was yanked from the Fade with a force like a blow. His eyes snapped open. Irion had turned away to bend over Ser Jessamyn. The Templar woman writhed in pain. Her heels drummed on the sandy ground.

Ander heard the spirit's words echo in his mind. _I crush and destroy the pain of others._

He reached out for the blood mage with hands that were not his own and felt the spirit's fierce mercy crash through him. Irion's mind was bent on cruelty. He tortured Ser Jessamyn with patience and exquisite ruthlessness. Anders could sense her pain, but it did not affect him. He walked silently up behind the blood mage and touched him on the shoulder. Irion turned, half-rising, his cuffs soaked in gore. His hands gleamed with blood. His expression was a piquant mixture of surprise and anger, like a child who had been interrupted in the midst of an engaging game.

The spirit slapped Anders' hand down on Irion's head. It pinned the blood mage kneeling on the ground, and then it began to work its magic. First it used Anders' healing talents to map Irion's body in an instant. When it had absorbed every scrap of his knowledge of muscles, bones and sinews, it accelerated and reversed the healing process with a touch. 

Irion screamed. Anders watched in horror as the mage's veins twined and knotted, cutting off blood supply to organs and limbs. Irion's bones twisted themselves into tortured shapes as the juices of his stomach began to digest his guts from the inside out. His eyes ruptured, leaking fluid down his face, and his lungs emptied themselves of every scrap of air.

Only then did Irion cease to scream.

Anders stripped the body down, separating flesh from bone and breaking down organs piece by piece. He parted every shred of flesh until all that was left was a pile of bloody scraps. The spirit may have had compassion for Irion's victims, but it had none for their murderer. It stripped him down bit by bit, and returned to the Fade only when nothing remained of Irion but ground bones and a smear of pulverised meat.

Once it was over Anders gazed down at the bloody mess.  A tooth gleamed in the gore. It was the only recognisable part of what had once been a human being. The taste of lyrium lay thickly on his tongue and the Fade pressed against his mind. He dropped to his knees and scooped up the length of chain that he had thrown to Irion. He clutched the manacles to his chest; nearly sobbing with relief as the enchantments engraved into the chains soaked into his skin and pushed the Fade away. When he could no longer hear the whispering of demons in his mind he looked up and heard Ser Jessamyn gasping for air.

Anders crawled over to the Templar. Blood-soaked leaves stuck to his hands and coat. The Templar's lips were blue under bloody froth. Her eyes were closed. Anders saw the marks of Irion's hands in the bruises on her throat. He thought that the woman had died as he reached her, but her eyelids slitted open as he approached. 

"Get away from me," she growled, and Anders was reminded of his tabby cat, hissing in the alley as his hands reached out to stroke his fur.

Anders had always tried to do the best for all his patients. He gathered Ser Jessamyn into his lap, wincing as she cried out, and clasped her narrow, sword-calloused hand in his. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and reached out to the Fade.

When the healing was done he passed straight from the Fade into the dreamer's realm of sleep. There were no threats within his dreams, and no demons. When he woke it was morning, and the dappled shadows of birch trees danced in a light wind above his head. Flies buzzed in the cool air.

He rolled over and saw Ser Jessamyn. The Templar woman crouched over the embers of the fire, poking at the ashes with a stick.  She looked over at Anders and said "You're awake."

Anders' hair tickled his nose. He realised one hand to push it away, and realised that he was chained once more. He sighed and slumped back, wondering just where the Templars drew the line between apostate and maleficarum. The air smelt of charred meat, of the scraps of flesh that bubbled and burned in the campfire. Ser Jessamyn reached over and picked up an armful of bloodstained leaf litter. She tossed it on the fire and stepped back as embers spiralled up into the sky, carrying the last remnants of the fight with them.

"Go on," Anders said to her. "Do it. Kill me."

 The Templar woman crossed to Anders and stood studying him for a moment before crouching down a prudent distance away.  "What was that?" she asked.

Anders saw no reason to lie. "It was a spirit," he told her.

"A spirit? What kind?"

"Compassion," Anders said.

He expected her to laugh, but she just nodded. The Templars were no stranger to the sort of mercy that came on the point of a sword. "He deserved it. He killed my men."

"Ser Lewis?" Anders asked her.

"Lewis and Ser Percival are dead," she said flatly. "The maleficar with them. I'd be dead if you hadn't healed me." She studied Anders as if he was a puzzle, then reached over and unlocked his chains. "You could have run."

Anders shrugged. "I'm a healer" he said. "It's my job."

Ser Jessamyn looked at Anders as if she didn't know what he was. "Whatever," she said, coughed, and winced. "As far I can see you're not an abomination. Yet. Come with me to the Tower, and I won't tell the Templars there what happened. They don't need to know about-" She jerked her head towards the scraps of meat. "About that."

Anders considered her proposal. It wasn't much of a deal, but judging from Ser Jessamyn's seamed and bloodstained face it was as good a deal as he was going to get, and more than most Templars would have offered. He was nearly too exhausted to care either way. In comparison to the horrors he had seen beyond the Veil, a quick death at the wrong end of a Templar blade seemed more than merciful. Besides, he had already summoned a spirit from beyond the Veil with no guidance and little training. What might he do if left to roam? Surrender to blood magic? Become an abomination?

He looked at the blood that still stained Ser Jessamyn's lips, and nodded. "All right," he said. "Let's go."

 


	8. Chapter Eight

Chapter Eight.

Ser Jessamyn kept her promise to Anders when they arrived at Calenhad. She said nothing to the Circle Templars about Anders' part in Irion's downfall, telling the Templars only that they had killed the blood mage, that Ser Percival and Ser Lewis had died in the attempt, and that Anders had handed himself in on the way back to the Circle. She gave Anders a curt nod as the Templars hauled him away.

He half -expected the Templars to take him straight to First Enchanter Irving, but instead they kept him waiting for a day and a half just because they could. Anders found the first day quite relaxing-the room had a bed and clean water and nobody who was actively trying to kill him. By the second day he was starting to wonder if First Enchanter Irving had sentenced him to solitary confinement without even bothering to inform Anders of his sentence. By the time an aide summoned him to the First Enchanter's chambers, he was more than ready to talk.

The rooms had not changed since the last time Anders had been brought there. There were the same heavy leather-bound books, the same gleaming oil lamps, the same disapproving stares from the Enchanter's aides. Only Anders had changed, or, at least, he felt as if he had.

The first thing Irving said to him was "The Templars should have brought you here immediately."

"I think," Anders said, "that they were trying to make a point. Where would we be if every ragged-arsed apostate who wandered in off the street could _demand_ an audience with the First Enchanter?"

"They should know better." Irving shook his head. Anders couldn't look him in the face. "And so should you. I have spoken to Ser Jessamyn."

Anders' heart sank. There was nothing he could say that would not incriminate him further, so he said nothing as Irving continued. "I have asked her not to speak of those events again." He shook his head and his beard wagged."A spirit healer. I should have known. Or at the very least, I should have guessed. We should be cautious."

"It wasn't a demon," Anders said warily. It was hard to think of the entity that he had summoned to rip Irion into bloody chunks as benevolent. "It was a good spirit-"

"There is no such thing!" Irving's anger blazed as brightly as the lanterns. The grandfatherly gleam in his eyes had vanished. "Just because a spirit is good does not mean it's harmless. The Fade is _dangerous_. It's true that some spirits are less hostile than others, but that does not make them _safe_. A possessed mage is a danger to us all."

"We're strong enough to resist," protested Anders. "Besides-"

Irving cut him off. "Are you? Are you really?"

If Anders was honest with himself-and he usually was, if only because his most impressive lies were reserved for other people-he had to admit that the First Enchanter was right. Before he had left the Tower, he had thought that the Templar threat alone was sufficient to strengthen a mage's mind against the horrors. Surely, he had argued, the knowledge that a mage would be slaughtered out of hand for becoming maleficar was enough incentive to refuse whatever the spirits offered? Wasn't it?

Now, he wasn't so sure.

"Locking ourselves up is not the only way," he said.

"It's a terrible price, yes, but some of us pay it gladly," Irving said; fixing Anders with a stern glance that made him feel both unreasonable and childish."If not us, who else? Some of us feel it gives us dignity. We take the burden Andraste gives us gladly. None of us chose this, but the least we can do is bear it with grace."

"No." Anders said flatly. "It's not."

First Enchanter Irving sighed. "I have heard your opinions many times before, Anders," he said. "But I would have thought that your recent experience would have changed your mind. You disappoint me. Moreover, you make a poor example for the other mages." He rose from his desk and beckoned Anders to follow him. "Come. Walk with me."

Ander rose and followed Irving down familiar corridors to a steep flight of stairs. The door at the bottom was bound in iron and locked, but First Enchanter Irving produced a long iron key from a ring in his belt and unlocked it with a clank and a rattle. Anders set his shoulder to the door and pushed it open He supported the First Enchanter as they walked down an arched circular corridor and up another steep flight of stairs.

The older wizard coughed. "I curse the man who insisted the Circle be housed in a Tower every time I walk this way," he groaned.

Anders wondered which way they were going. "Where-" he asked, but the old man held up one gnarled finger in a gesture that had silenced whole classrooms of students.

"You will learn very soon," he croaked. "Now give me a hand. My knees are not as young as they used to be, and these cursed stairs are steep."The old man looked as frail as a coat-rack but his skinny body was surprisingly heavy. Anders was glad by the time they emerged from the steep staircase into a large round chamber at the very top of the Tower.

 Sunlight lanced through stained-glass windows to tint the floor with colour. It brightened the backs of the small knot of Templars and mages who huddled in the centre of the room, drawing a large and ornate chalk circle onto the oiled floorboards. They glanced over their shoulder at the First Enchanted as he approached. Anders trailed at his heels like the hem of a torn robe.

  1. A mage in the robes of a senior enchanter looked up and frowned. "First Enchanter?"   



Irving coughed. He reached back and braced himself on Anders' shoulder with one gnarled hand. "Enchanter Delia," he said. "You must perform the Harrowing. I trust that everything is ready."

Anders would have been hard pressed to say who was most surprised, himself or Delia. Her frown deepened. She glared accusingly at Anders, as if it was his fault. He supposed that it was. "But we've not had nearly enough time!"

"It cannot wait." Irving said firmly.

"Can't it?" asked Anders. "The Harrowing? Really?"

"If you want to survive, you must learn the rules." Irving said firmly to Anders. "Sometimes sacrifices are necessary. The Harrowing is not perfect-far from it, but it's better than Tranquillity. If you don't prove that you can resist possession then the Templars will make you Tranquil." He frowned. "That would be a great waste. You have so much potential, and I will not see it wasted on harebrained escape schemes."

The mage Delia sighed. She reached into the pocket of her robe, dug round and produced a small flask of lyrium, which she held out to Anders. He went to take it, and hesitated at the last second.

First Enchanter Irving nodded."Every mage must go through this trial of fire. As we survived it, so shall you."

Anders took the flask from Delia. He looked around, unsure of his position in the ceremony. She gestured to the centre of the circle with a sharp nod of her chin and said "Stand there."

"What do I do then?"

"Drink the lyrium," Delia said. "Everything happens by itself after that."

Anders nodded. He examined the flask as he removed the cork. The lyrium was dyed deep purple by the coloured light that streamed in through the stained glass windows. It looked curdled, but it smelt just as he remembered.

He dropped the cork on the ground and drank deeply.

He wrenched himself free from the Fade what seemed like hours later, palms stinging with magic. The candles had barely burned down. The stained-glass patterns on the floor seemed a fraction longer than before, but Anders wasn't sure if he was imagining it or not.

He thought that the Templars looked a little disappointed. The mages definitely looked relieved.

First Enchanter Irving raised one eyebrow. "So quickly? One would almost think you'd done that before."

Enchanter Delia left the circle and returned with a long staff of twisted wood that she held out to Anders. "Your staff, mage," she said. "Well done."

Anders took the staff from her. He'd dreamed of receiving his staff when he was young enough to know no better, before he figured out it was just another way to bind mages to the Circle. The wood was warm under his hands, as if the staff was alive. He hefted the pole experimentally. "That's it?"

The First Enchanter nodded. "That's it," Irving confirmed.

"You _could_ show your gratitude to the First Enchanter." Delia snapped.

Anders looked at Irving through locks of filthy hair. "Thanks," he said. "I think."

The First Enchanter sighed. "You have passed the Harrowing. You are now a full member of the Circle of Magi. You have the right to practise magic, answering only to the Templars, and to a council of your peers. I fear it is a weighty burden." He looked Anders up and down. "I hope that you will prove equal to the task."

One of the Templars coughed."First Enchanter," he said, "The punishment..?"

Irving nodded irritably. "I'm getting to that. Mage Anders, it is my duty as First Enchanter to congratulate you upon passing the Harrowing. However, it is also my duty to pass sentence upon you for leaving the Circle without permission. Maybe a month in solitary confinement will lead you to reflect upon on the duties of a mage."

 _And maybe_ , thought Anders, _it won't_. "Yes, First Enchanter," he said.

Delia and the Templars looked satisfied at this outward show of obedience. First Enchanter Irving appeared less convinced. He held out his hands to Anders, and said "Follow me."

They left the Harrowing chamber the way they had arrived. Irving was, if anything, even slower descending the stairs than he had been on the way up. "How did you find the Fade?" he asked Anders conversationally when they reached the corridor.

Anders shook his head. "It gets no easier," he said.

"It does not," Irving agreed. "You should learn from your experiences, though, and be strengthened by them. Soon it will not seem so much a trial. You have talent, Anders. Do not waste it. A month in solitary is the minimum punishment the Templars will accept for escaping. You would do well to use the time to study."

Anders nodded glumly. He would have liked to meet the other mages first, if only to compare experiences of the Harrowing. "I hate solitary."

"That's why it's called a punishment," Irving said, with the ghost of a glint in his eye. "Try not to antagonise the Templars. It never does solve anything."

"I'll keep that in mind." Anders said. He stretched, feeling the unaccustomed weight of the new staff on his back pulling at his shoulders. "First Enchanter?"

"Yes?"

"Thanks for the help."

Irving nodded. "Why don't you try sticking around this time?" he said kindly. "The Templars will never accept outright rebellion. It is far easier for us to change the system from within. The more you fight, the more you convince the Templars that we are far too dangerous to be free."

"I'll try," Anders said.

"You may find your opinions change, in time." Irving said as they descended the last flight of stairs. His knees creaked like a galleon in a hurricane. Anders found himself using his new staff simply to slow their descent.

"I doubt it," he told the First Enchanter as they rounded the corner and saw a group of Templars loitering around the base of the grand staircase.  "Not the basement cells again? They're depressingly well-guarded."

Irving smiled. "Take care of yourself, Anders. And remember, you can always talk to me."

"I thought the whole point of solitary was that I couldn't talk to anyone," Anders said glumly.

 Irving gestured to the Templars, who came to attention in a deafening crash of mail and barked at Anders "Silence, mage!"

"See what I mean?" Anders said as the Templars surrounded him.

" _Silence_ , mage!"

"There is a certain dignity in endurance, Anders." First Enchanter Irving said as Anders was led away.

Anders couldn't see how. He endured for three days, and then he waited until the Templars locked him in the cell and went away to change the guard or polish their armour or fornicate with nugs or do whatever they did in their spare time. When he was bored of enduring any longer he reached up and unknotted the tattered scrap of leather that tied his ponytail. His half-diamond lock pick dropped down into his hand.

It took him a while to find an angle that would allow him to manipulate the padlock from inside his cell, but he managed it eventually. The lock was stiff, its tumblers half-rusted in place, and much heavier than the lock Ser Jessamyn had used to clasp her chains. It took Anders several minutes before the tumblers fell into alignment and the lock clicked open.

Anders pushed the cell door open cautiously and looked both ways down the corridor.

The Templars wore ensorcelled armour to protect them from dark magic, but Anders had six feet of solid oak at his disposal. He also had a near- encyclopaedic knowledge of all the hidden routes and passageways n the Calenhad Tower. It had helped him out of many scrapes in the past, and into far, far more.

Anders tucked the lock pick back into his hair. He slung his staff onto his back, pushed the door open and walked cautiously down the corridor, heading towards the watergate, where he knew there was a grille that fastened imperfectly.

Maybe the Templars would catch him, and maybe they wouldn't. If they did, it wouldn’t be the first time. Anders reckoned even an hour of freedom was worth any length of solitary confinement in the cells. The Tower itself, though richly furnished, was just another kind of prison.

He smiled as he walked down the corridor towards whatever lay ahead. 

 

 


End file.
